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Silas Neff, Ph.D. 



Power 

Through Perfected 

Ideas 



A Study of the Qualitative Principle 
of Knowledge as Applied to Human 
Development and Success :: :: :: :: 



s By 

SILAS NEFF, Ph. D. 

PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER OF NEFF COLLEGE 

Author of " Talks on Education and Oratory " ; Lecturer on 

Oratory, Crozer and Dutch Reformed Theological 

Seminaries, Franklin and Marshall 

College, etc. 



FIFTH EDITION 



Published by 

NEFF COLLEGE 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
1921 



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Copyright 1911-1921 
By SIIvAS NEFF 



All Rights Reserved 



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PREFACE 

This book is the outgrowth of many years' experience in 
teaching. The students ranged in age from eight to sixty, were 
of both sexes, represented many professions and lines of busi- 
ness, and varied greatly in scholarship and in culture. Among 
the different needs which brought them to school, expressed in 
their own language, were Self-Confidence, Repose, Observa- 
tion, Memory, Originality ; Expression in Conversation, in Ex- 
tempore Speech, in Elocution, in Dramatic Art, in Oratory , in 
Vocal and Instrumental Music, in Authorship, in Salesman- 
ship ; Management of People ; Voice Culture ; Physical Grace 
and Skill ; Health ; Personal Force in all Situations, etc., etc. 

It would perhaps occasion little surprise if the discovery 
of scientific remedies for such a heterogeneous list of needs 
should appear a difficult if not impossible task. The difficulty 
was much lessened, however, by the fact that the same funda- 
mental remedy applies in a more or less direct way to all con- 
ditions. 

We have aimed to make suggestively clear what the remedy 
is. This is the end of our present purpose. There has been 
no attempt to explain in detail the relation of increased mind 
power to man's internal life, to external human activity, nor 
to the various professions and such references in these direc- 
tions as are made, are intended merely to illumine the funda- 
mental principle. 

The author desires to express his gratitude to students and 
friends whose confidence, open-mindedness, interest and en- 
thusiasm through many years have contributed so much to 
happiness and to whatever progress may have been made. 
He desires that each of them will accept these words as a 
message of kindest regard and precious memory. 

Philadelphia., February 25, 191 1. 



PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION 

Man's personal destiny and the fate of civilization depend 
upon the education of the individual. 

In theory there is but one Education. 

In actual practice there are two kinds of teaching. The first 
consists in imparting mere information. The second develops 
all sides of man's nature through the evolution of organic 
knowledge and the growth of perfected ideas. 

The first kind of teaching does not develop, but weakens the 
action of man's mental and spiritual powers, impedes his per- 
sonal progress and his commercial success, misdirects and un- 
dermines civilization. 

The Education which grows all around people through the 
evolution of organic knowledge accomplishes for man five 
things. It teaches him how to use his present knowledge and 
his natural ability ; it creates a desire for wider and deeper 
knowledge ; it increases his inherited talent ; it enlarges the 
functioning of the subjective mind; it opens wider the channels 
of Soul expression. 

Stated in another way, the Education embodying perfected 
ideas arouses from slumber and strengthens all human powers ; 
organizes their activities in a mighty co-ordinating human en- 
gine ; shows each man how to concentrate, to centralize and to 
focus the entire energy of his mobilized being upon the work 
in hand. 

The key to this Education and to the solution of all human 
problems is found only in organic knowledge, in the knowledge 
that lives and grows throughout life. 

"Power through perfected ideas" aims only to explain 
the basic laws by which this kind of knowledge is gained. 

Remark — To render the book more useful to the reader, the 
author has added at the close one of the numerous outlines 
of this Education as applied at Neff College, Outline XV, Per- 
fected Ideas. 



CONTENTS 

Page. 

Chapter I. The Problem n 

Pleasure in perfect work. Susceptibility of all things to 
improvement. Includes man. Attempts at self-improve- 
ment. Human deterioration. Specialization. Human 
needs. Power, knowledge, skill. Happiness. Tact. 
Morality. Charm. Mind growth. Man's situation. Rem- 
edy. Development. 

Chapter II. Human Efficiency 17 

Success. Three-fold aspect. Complete, developed mind. 
Character. Personality. A developed mind and goodness. 
Health. Problem. 

Chapter III. Man 20 

Man. Mind. Most important knowledge. Organisms. 
Organizations. Growth of organisms. Man's future pos- 
sibilities. 

Chapter IV. Seed Perfection 22 

Man a single organism. Nucleus of the central power of 
the organism. Impressions. Seed and fruit. Impressions 
explained. A perfect seed standard. 

Chapter V. Substitutional Thinking ..... 27 
Substitutional thinking explained. Importance and dan- 
ger. Concrete thinking. How to test it. Grade of the 
average man's impressions. 

Chapter VI. Seed Growth 31 

Two phases of mind improvement. Seed perfection. 
Perfection of association. Centralization. Perfected idea 
defined. 

Chapter VII. God, Universe, Man 35 

Mystery of creation. Growth of vegetation, animals, man. 
Nature and human nourishment. 

Chapter VIII. A Perfected Idea of a River .... 39 
The first stage of education. Concrete basis. Sketch of 
the river idea. 



Page. 

Chapter IX. Perfected Ideas 45 

Growth of the river idea. Relation of the river idea to 
other ideas. Economy of time. Memory. A perfected 
idea illustrated. Men's standard ideas. How the standard 
is raised. 

Chapter X. Perfected Ideals 50 

Two grades of ideas. Source. Expression. Ideals made 
practical. Outline of a perfected ideal. Reinforcement. 
Personal : — Growth, health, expression, attraction, think- 
ing, emotion, character, culture, self-respect, work. 
External : — Influence, commercial results, social effects, 
political results. 

Chapter XL The Perfected Mind 57 

Synthetic, vivid mind. Mind growth illustrated. Obser- 
vation. Imagination. Idealization, association, feeling. 

Chapter XII. Imagination 63 

Ideas and mental faculties. Imagination and growth. 
Imagination and work. Perfected ideas and imagination. 

Chapter XIII. Thinking 65 

Objects and relations. Impressions and thoughts. Per- 
fected ideas and thinking power. 

Chapter XIV. Memory, Recollection, Concentration . . 67 
Memory and growth. Vividness of impressions, memory, 
recollection and concentration; 

Chapter XV. A Human Locomotive 69 

Guidance and propulsion. Track and steam. Power in 
feeling. 

Chapter XVI. The Track 71 

The track principle, wisdom, intelligence. Two phases of 
ideas. Impressions and the track. The track and work. 

Chapter XVII. Steam 73 

Steam and work. Great work and feeling. Heart and 
work. 

Chapter XVIII. Replenishment 75 

Coal, water, steam. Blood and impressions. Supply and 
discharge. Physical source of power. 

Chapter XIX. Steam Pressure 77 

Power under pressure. Steam and kettle. Work. Feeling 
under pressure. Homesickness. Desire. 



Page. 
Chapter XX. Will 82 

Will illustrated and denned. Community of interest. 

Chapter XXI. Two Kinds of Feelings 85 

Positive and negative feelings. Pain and happiness. 
Positive feelings and health. Beauty. Grace. Voice. 
Attractiveness. 

Chapter XXII. Negative Feelings ...... 89 

How avoided. Perfected idea mind. Remedy for negative 
interpretations of nature. 

Chapter XXIII. Words 93 

Mind growth and language. Books and the problem of 
education. Psychology of words. Symbols. Function of 
words. 

Chapter XXIV. Sentences 96 

Psychology of the sentence. Functions of sentences illus- 
trated. 

Chapter XXV. Books 98 

Psychological use of books. The scientific use of books. 
Quantitative and qualitative education. 

Chapter XXVI. Self-Expression 101 

Self-expression and growth. Universal self-expression. 

Chapter XXVII. A Perfected Idea Man 103 

Growth. Happiness. Central life purpose. Originality. 
Initiative. Openmindedness. A psychalized body. Adapt- 
ability. Naturalness. Self-confidence. Personality. Bal- 
ance. Repose. Spirituality. 

Chapter XXVIII. The New Work 107 

Labor, Business, Teaching, Authorship, Music, Acting, 
Oratory. All lines of work. 

Chapter XXIX. Some Educational Inferences . . .112 
Possible growth during a single life time. Growth and 
age. Universal adaptability of idea education. Function 
of the idea teacher. A readjustment. 

Chapter XXX. A Prophecy 119 

A hew human life. Test of education. A psychological 
age. Centralization. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PROBLEM. 

The world in which we live is a thrilling spectacle. Its 
objects, forces, laws, considered individually, are of absorbing 
interest; viewed as a whole the effect is overwhelming. The 
mechanism of the universe, nature's adaptation to the needs 
of vegetable and animal life, its beauty, revealed wonders, 
hidden mysteries, complexity, transformations, all evoke deep 
responses in the human mind. 

But in many of its aspects, the earth and its products are 
mere raw material, relatively, in the hands of man. He im- 
proves upon nature and here lies a new source of interest of 
bewildering possibilities. This improvement of plant and 
animal life might well mark the limit of human intelligence, 
but it pales in significance in the light of that higher ideal, 
the development of man himself. 

Man has not only accepted the possibility of self improve- 
ment as a fact, but from the remote past, he has made spe- 
cial efforts to advance beyond his ancestors and to excel even 
his own previous attainments. These attempts, however, be- 
ing rarely scientific human growth can be credited only partially 
to their account. The prime causes of personal human de- 
velopment are to be found in the more or less scientific applica- 
tion of the laws of mind growth in all kinds of labor, mental 
and physical, in the advancement of knowledge, in the struggle 
for existence, and in efforts towards commercial, personal and 
national ascendancy. 



12 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

Statements are current to the effect that men of certain 
nations are deteriorating in mind and character. Whether or 
not this is capable of verification there are at least indications 
of its truth. It may be that work, as at present performed 
in those countries, has exhausted its possibilities as a means of 
mental development, or that certain classes have too much 
leisure from the point of view of mind growth. On the other 
hand, it is no doubt a fact that business on its present large 
scale exceeds that of a hundred years ago in producing cer- 
tain desirable mental qualities. This, however, is not true of 
all lines of endeavor. The extreme specialization of today 
while resulting in commendable qualities has on the whole a 
narrowing tendency. The old-fashioned worker performing 
many kinds of labor, or the mechanic turning out an object 
of manufacture entirely by his own efforts, became broader 
in mind growth, though perhaps not equaling the modern 
specialist in technical skill. 

In view of frequent references to the necessity of a higher 
average of mental growth, it may be well here to state briefly 
a few of the points in which man is in need of improvement. 
Generally speaking, this need appears under three heads, 
original brain power, more vivid and more practical knowl- 
edge, and, in many directions, greater skill. This is an age 
of science. It is realized that, scientifically speaking, nothing 
happens, there are no accidents, and nothing exists aside from 
cause and effect. There is everywhere an effort to discover 
and apply the laws by which things desirable may be brought 
into existence. This fortunate tendency is only beginning to 
appear in the domain of the mind and in human life. Human 
need appears in the fact that man has not yet mastered many 
important problems of daily living. He has, for example, just 
begun the investigation of the deeper causes of happiness. 



THE PROBLEM I 3 

His unhappy moods and his periods of elation are to him fre- 
quently a mystery. He is largely the helpless victim of his 
emotions. The science of human happiness is a new con- 
ception. 

Were the most tactful person asked to state the laws regu- 
lating his social intercourse he would be unable to do so, and 
perhaps would be surprised at the request. Many people are 
hardly aware that such laws exist. Ask a successful merchant 
to outline the group of mental laws which play a necessary 
part in great commercial achievement. He would admit the 
existence of psychological causes and the reasonableness of 
the task assigned him, but instead of complying scientifically, 
he would probably dispose of the matter by presenting merely 
a number of external rules which he had found useful. 

All thinking people are interested in the problems of right 
and wrong conduct. Various causes, some superstitious, oth- 
ers superficial, have been offered as explanations of immoral- 
ity. What are the laws of moral action? Why do certain 
persons act rightly and others under practically the same ex- 
ternal conditions act immorally ? Why will the same individual 
under similar circumstances act morally today and immorally 
tomorrow ? 

We speak of the secret of human attractiveness, of personal 
charm. But what are its laws? The most fascinating indi- 
vidual cannot explain the causes of this envied quality. It 
might here be objected that the fact of knowing why he is 
charming would destroy the virtue. This would tend to be 
true if the reasons entertained were merely external and ar- 
tificial. But the objection would not apply to a vivid scien- 
tific knowledge of the laws of attraction. 

Let us proceed to a matter yet more fundamental, and test 
man's life equipment at one of its most vital points. Why 



14 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

do certain people continue to increase in mind power for 
many years after others of the same age have begun to de- 
cline? How many people so conduct their lives that growth 
of mind parallels advance in years ? When a mind begins pre- 
maturely to weaken, why is its decay not arrested and mental 
old age thus postponed? Mankind is wandering, drifting, 
drawn this way and that by a thousand trivial secondary pur- 
poses which warp and stunt the growth of character. There 
is yet no general acceptance of a unifying, harmonizing prin- 
ciple, no adoption of the right ultimate object for the realiza- 
tion of which all may strive. 

Many things are wrong with the world. Is it realized that 
there are numerous ills which nothing but greater mental power 
and higher human wisdom can remedy? There are convin- 
cing reasons for believing this higher development to be pos- 
sible. In all ages there have been great minds. They at- 
tained their power through development. Inherited ability is 
the result of development in previous generations, and even 
power of mind resulting from mixture of bloods depends to a 
degree at least on the same development principle applied in 
a different way. Plant cultivation is scientific. Man is the 
highest known product of creation. Special development 
should apply to him also. In all schools there are examples 
of what the usual instruction in the acquisition of knowledge 
will frequently accomplish, even when the teaching is not scien- 
tifically aimed at mind growth. All minds improve more or 
less under the influence of life's ordinary activities, though 
the laws of mental growth are necessarily applied very inade- 
quately. If, on the other hand, the causes of brain growth 
were fully understood and applied, if not only teachers and 
parents, but all people were masters of this greatest of all 
sciences, and if its laws were in daily operation from child- 



THE PROBLEM 15 

hood to old age, proportionately higher growth and power 
would follow. 

How strange is man's situation ! He wakes in early life 
to self-consciousness, attempts self-study, has glimpses of 
wonders in his body and mind, but is halted in discouragement 
just beyond the threshold, where all is mystery. Minerals, 
plants and animals exist in self-ignorance, can man go no 
further? Is he not to become acquainted with himself? The 
mechanic understands his machine, why not himself? The 
florist is thrilled at the budding of a new flower, shall his 
knowledge of the flower be greater than of his own mind, 
which helped to make the flower possible? The professor is 
master of Latin, but the one really great wonder of the world 
in the brain of his pupil, will he translate it? Everywhere, 
everything will be understood, shall man only remain un- 
known? Without his volition man has inherited himself. 
There is much for gratitude and not a little for regret. Is 
he to accept this estate as it is, regardless of what it is? But 
an embryo with blemishes, is he to have no formula to cleanse 
its spots, no power to direct its evolution? His hope, his 
ambition is high ; he is conscious of an inner force ; he has 
visions beyond words to describe ; must he forever remain un- 
satisfied, can nothing avert the necessity of a forced content- 
ment, nor dispel the gloom of a threatened inertia? 

But the way out is as glorious as the present condition is 
depressing. The Creator's provision for human emancipation 
is as magnificent as the seeming neglect and alleged oversight 
have been puzzling. For the direst need of the greatest fact 
in the world, there exists a perfect remedy. Nature is vindi- 
cated in the laws of human development. In these laws is 
the solution of man's earthly destiny, in their application the 
compensation for his disappointment, the gratification of de- 



l6 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

sire, fulfillment of hope, the remedy for every defect. In 
their complete realization, man will become transfixed before 
a worthy purpose, his interest will be absorbed in a consistent 
scheme of living, all objects of thought will be organized in a 
true and permanent perspective and mankind will move scien- 
tifically toward approximate perfection, for the attainment of 
which all things exist. 



CHAPTER II. 

HUMAN EFFICIENCY. 

In estimating the value of a man's life we may consider 
him first as an individual; secondly, in his relations to other 
people, and lastly, in his relation to his work. True success 
includes these three elements. Is he successful as a man, in his 
contact with people, and is he successful as a worker? The 
first is the cause of the other two. If the man is what he 
should be in body, mind, and character, he will succeed in his 
work and as a member of society. 

There is common agreement among thinking people who 
have given attention to the matter, as to the physical, mental 
and moral qualities essential to a successful life. The pos- 
session of good health, endurance and vigor, a complete and 
a developed mind, and a well-rounded character will always 
insure success. A complete mind is one in which all mental 
faculties, as Observation, Imagination, Feeling, Association, 
Memory, Recollection, Thinking, Reasoning, Judgment, Will, 
are performing their normal functions. A developed, com- 
plete mind is one in which these faculties have grown to a 
high degree of strength. 

Resulting from the more or less combined operations of 
the faculties of a complete mind are the factors constituting 
what is called character. Among these are Personality; Nat- 
uralness, Sincerity, Love of Truth, Honesty, Knowledge-hun- 
ger; Originality, Vision Power; Self-Confidence, Self Reli- 
ancej Moral Courage, Initiative, Ambition, Hope; Emotional 






1 8 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

Complexity, Emotional Propulsion, and Emotional Harmony; 
Enthusiasm, Appreciation, Gratitude, Worship, Happiness ; 
Broad Mindedness ; Personal Liberty, Enfranchisement from 
Material Things; Culture, Balance, Repose. 

While there is unanimity of opinion as to the necessity 
of possessing such a body, mind and character, there are many 
different theories as to how these are to be attained. These 
theories arise from different conceptions of the nature of the 
human mind and from different definitions of character, of 
education, and of knowledge. By some it is thought to be 
possible to have an ideal mind and at the same time to possess 
an imperfect character. And such an inference is natural 
when the mind is falsely believed to consist only of intellect, 
memory and will, excluding imagination and feeling. A sim- 
ilar misconception of mind leads to many other unscientific 
conclusions, among them being the notion that personality, 
self-reliance, honesty and all elements of character exist in 
man separate from his mind; that it is possible to possess an 
ideal mind and not know how to use it; that a man with an 
ideal mind might succeed not only because of his mind power, 
but by force of his personality or that one's education might 
be perfect but be put to a bad use. These statements are all 
more or less contradictory. It is the mind that uses the mind. 
Mind is the man. If the mind is unable to use the mind it is 
so far an imperfect mind. Education put to poor use is in 
some respects a poor education. To say that a man succeeds 
by force of personality is only to say that he succeeds by force 
of mind, that one part of his mind is reinforced by another 
part. Personality, like character, is a part of mind. 

To say that a man may be good, though possessing a weak 
mind, is not as complimentary as it sounds. His goodness is 
a product of his weak mind, and is therefore a weak kind of 



HUMAN EFFICIENCY 1 9 

goodness, being perhaps a mere absence of badness, and not 
possessing any qualities positively good. A man, for example, 
lacking imagination in certain directions, and certain kinds of 
feeling, will be deficient in such elements of character as Self- 
confidence, Tact, Kindness, Gratitude and Worship. 

Because of one-sided views of character it has been said 
that a perfect character may sometimes be found in a diseased 
body. It is pointed out that not only negative but positive 
goodness and a high degree of spirituality have been attained 
by life-long invalids. But in all such cases it could no doubt 
be shown that in so far as their bodies failed to perform their 
functions the mind suffered, and in consequence certain ele- 
ments of the character also. An individual with a poor quality 
of blood, weak heart, and diseased nerves, would be cor- 
respondingly weakened in courage, initiative and ambition. 

As all elements of character spring spontaneously from a 
complete mind the problem resolves itself into the question of 
how to attain such a mind. To realize the practical value of 
the elements of character, to dwell mentally upon them, to 
read books upon their importance, upon what they will ac- 
complish for their possessor, are all valuable, but after all 
possible is accomplished by these means the great problem of 
mind-growth, personality and character yet remains to be 
solved. 



CHAPTER III. 

MAN. 

All that you do, you do with your mind. The stronger your 
mind the greater you and your work will be. Improve your 
mind and you improve yourself and your work. The most 
important of all kinds of knowledge is that which directs one 
in improving his mind. Where can we obtain this knowledge ? 
The knowledge to guide one in improving anything, whether 
plants, animals or man, can be found mainly in the nature of 
the object to be improved. We must apply the laws of plant 
life in growing plants, and the principles of animal or of 
human life in improving animals or in educating people. That 
we may discover the laws of human improvement we must 
therefore learn what kind of being man is. We see at once 
that he is not like buildings. They are constructed. Man is 
not built nor manufactured, but is more like plants or animals 
which grow. Made things are organizations. Things that 
grow, such as plants, animals, men, are organisms. Organi- 
zations and organisms are alike in one particular; in order 
to be improved, something must be added to them. They 
differ radically, however, in the manner of making the addi- 
tion. An organization such as a wall is enlarged by adding 
stones to the outside or top of the wall. In adding these 
stones, neither the inner nature of the wall nor the composition 
of the stones that are added is changed. This particular kind 
of adding process is called accretion. An organism, on the 
other hand, as a tree, becomes larger by adding, not to its out- 
side, but to the inside. The sap which is added to the tree to 



MAN 21 

enlarge it passes up through the roots inside of the tree and 
is not added by accretion, but by absorption or assimilation. 
Different portions of the sap flow to various parts of the tree. 
What a marvelous fact we have here, that from the same kind 
of sap are grown things so different as leaves, bark, limbs, 
blossoms, fruit ! The sap that goes to the bark becomes bark ; 
that which flows to the fruit becomes fruit, each portion of 
the sap losing its identity in that part of the tree to which it 
flows and of which it becomes a part. This is growth by as- 
similation. Plants, animals, men, all organisms, grow by as- 
similation. 

An organization being a dead thing can do nothing of it- 
self to increase its size or to improve itself. Organisms, being 
alive, can do much to increase their growth. The higher an 
organism in the scale of life the more it can do. Man, being 
the highest, can do the most. Among his future attainments in 
science, invention, education, what he will accomplish for him- 
self will be his greatest achievement. 



CHAPTER IV. 
SEED PERFECTION. 

Is man one organism or two? Do his mind and body grow 
separately, or do they grow as one organism, like a rose-bush? 
Body and mind are united and form one organism. Man is a 
unit. For the purpose of development he must be studied, not 
as two separate parts, but as a single being. 

In improving an organization, say a house, we give atten- 
tion to each part separately, adapting the repairs to the needs 
of each part, be it foundation, frame or roof. Repairing the 
roof does not remedy the defects in the foundation. In or- 
ganisms, on the other hand, there is a central force or principle 
of life which, if properly cared for, will improve the entire 
organism. In a plant organism this central power is the sap, 
in the lower animals it is the blood. The whole plant is bene- 
fited by improving the quality of the sap, and if the blood is 
made richer the entire animal becomes more healthy. 

As man is a single organism, including body and mind, the 
central force must be of such a character as to animate and 
control, directly or indirectly, both mind and body. The prin- 
ciple must be one whose development determines the growth 
and strength of the complete mind, the general control of the 
body, the value of human work, the progress of the race. 

The core or nucleus of this central power is the mental 
impression, mind picture, image. There is no difficulty in un- 
derstanding in a general way what a mind picture, image, im- 
pression is in its simple form. Let the reader look carefully 
at any object, as a clock, for example, and there will be formed 



SEED PERFECTION 23 

in his mind an ordinary picture, image, impression, of the 
clock. Listen to the sound of a bell, and after the bell itself 
has stopped ringing he will yet hear the sound in his mind ; or 
touch a piece of ice and he will retain the mental impression of 
the coldness long after he has removed his hand. 

We have before us, therefore, two facts, seed and fruit. 
Mental impressions are the seed; what man is and what he 
has done are the fruit. We have the central germ or funda- 
mental principle, and we see its consequences in human lives 
and in human work. Is the fruit satisfactory? Are people 
efficient? Do all people possess complete minds? Are they 
all that they should be in personal character ? Do they succeed 
in business or professional life as they should? If not, shall 
we find the cause in a corresponding deficiency in man's mental 
impression ? We will take it for granted that the fruit is gen- 
erally imperfect. We will assume that people do not, as a 
rule, possess complete minds and that in their personal lives, 
and socially, professionally, commercially, they are not always 
as successful as they desire to be. On this assumption we will 
examine man's impressions, and if found defective we will 
endeavor not only to trace human deficiencies to this source, 
but also to discover the remedy. 

Mental impressions are a kind of photograph. These photo- 
graphs are pictures in the mind of objects in the world about 
us, as buildings, flowers, mountains, waterfalls, people. The 
fact to be determined is whether or not these photographs are 
perfect likenesses of the things they represent. If they are 
perfect, we must look elsewhere for the cause of human weak- 
ness and for the source of human greatness. In order to make 
a test of these photographs, we must first have a standard with 
which to compare them. We will, therefore, first decide what 
a perfect mental photograph would be, and with this as a 



24 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

standard, will then compare man's average mental pictures with 
the standard, and discover how nearly the two correspond. As 
an example, we present a mind picture of a bird. We will de- 
scribe what such a mind picture would be if it were perfect. 
Were we testing the degree of perfection of an ordinary card 
photograph and not a mind photograph of a bird, we would 
expect to find in the card photograph the correct shape of 
the bird, part of its light and shade and perhaps, though not 
necessarily, its correct size. Were we testing an oil painting 
of a bird we would find in addition the color represented and 
more of its light and shade. That is, a painting can reproduce 
the shape, size, color, light and shade of the bird, — four ele- 
ments. Would this be a complete likeness ? Not by any means. 
A perfect picture would correspond to the real bird, and the 
real bird is composed of many elements in addition to the four 
just mentioned. 

Among these elements are the following: color, light and 
shade, form, size, dimension, perspective, location, direction, 
distance, motion, sound, odor, taste, touch, temperature, weight, 
hardness and softness, resistance, etc. 

We see that an oil painting or a card photograph represents 
only a small portion of the entire bird, and is therefore very 
incomplete. The question arises, can the photographic ma- 
chinery of the mind do more than the camera or the paint- 
er's brush? Can the mind form a picture that represents 
a larger part of the bird? We have before us one of the 
wonders of creation: The mind, if rightly developed and 
properly educated, can photograph the entire bird! That is, in 
addition to the four elements represented by the painting, the 
highly developed mind can reproduce all of the parts that 
constitute the complete bird. For example, a perfect picture 
bird in the mind would have all of the motions of the real 



SEED PERFECTION 2$ 

bird, of its head, feet, mouth, tail, wings, and eyes. It would 
not be a thin, flat, mental bird, of length and width only, such 
as we have in the photograph or painting, but it would have a 
representation of thickness and bulk. In this perfect mind 
bird would be represented odor; temperature, of its various 
parts; sound, of its wings, of its bill as it eats, of its feet as 
they touch a limb, the ground or the wire of a cage, and the 
tones of its voice; roughness and smoothness; weight; re- 
sistance as its wings beat the air; hardness and softness, and 
so on. But we have not completed this psychic art product. 
So far, we have a representation of only the outside parts of 
the bird. What would be thought of a picture bird that in 
addition to all these external features contains representations 
of all the internal parts, of its organs, muscles, bones, blood 
circulation, brain and nerve system, with all of the elements 
that compose these, color, shape, size, motion, odor, etc., in 
other words, an entire mind bird, having the inside and out- 
side parts, that does all that the real bird can do, and more; 
a spirit bird, swinging in a spirit cage, hanging in <a spirit win- 
dow of a spirit house, standing in the spirit world of the mind! 
In this perfect living mind picture of a bird we now have an 
ideal standard by which to test man's mental impressions. 
When we state that his impressions of all things that make up 
his knowledge should correspond to the objects represented, 
the meaning must now be clear. When man thinks of the bird 
in his mind, he should be able to see, hear, touch, taste, smell, 
in a mental way all that he would see, hear, touch, taste, smell, 
in a material way, were he to hold the actual bird in his hands. 
Or were he to look with the eye of his mind at his mental pic- 
ture of a horse he should see, hear, etc., all that he would see 
and hear with his physical eyes, were he a first-class observer, 
looking at an actual horse. Or again, if he thinks of the Alps 



26 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

Mountains, he should behold in his mind all that he would see 
if he were a man of highly cultivated observation, and were 
really traveling over the Alps. If his impression is perfect 
he will have in his mind and will see the full life-size Alps 
Mountains. He will see the colors of the vegetation, of the 
snow and ice, of the people, buildings, and waterfalls. He 
will see the motions of the mountains, the rising fog, waving 
trees, floating clouds, falling rain. He will hear the sounds 
of the dashing water and crashing avalanches, of the rolling 
thunder, voices of the people, roaring and sighing wind, rum- 
bling vehicles. He will smell the mountain odors, and experi- 
ence in his mind the varying degrees of temperature. His 
mind Alps will appear as large, real, and complete when he is 
absent from the mountains as when he is upon them. The 
standard demands also the internal X-ray Alps. His mind 
Alps will possess internal as well as external reality. He will 
imagine the dark, silent, cold, dense solidity of their unex- 
plored, invisible regions, with all of the elements previously 
mentioned that belong to these. 

As any object in the material world is composed in general 
of the same number of elements as the bird or the mountain, 
we now have the universal standard by which to test the 
degree of perfection of the nucleus of the central power of the 
human organism, mental impressions. 

Some of the elements are more prominent in certain ob- 
jects than in others. We would not ordinarily think of a piece 
of glass as having odor and taste, while in a flower or peach, 
odor and taste would be prominent elements. A piece of glass 
pulverized has taste and odor, but these are its less important 
elements, and for mind growth purposes would not be highly 
important. 



CHAPTER V. 
SUBSTITUTIONAL THINKING. 

In making this test of our impressions to determine their 
degree of perfection, we must guard against a subtle danger. 
In a certain way, paradoxical as it may seem, man can think 
of an object when in reality he has no mental photograph, no 
special impression of the particular object of which he seems 
to be thinking. As he can do this he is constantly in danger 
of taking it for granted that he has a picture of the object 
of which he seems to be thinking, when in reality he may 
have none whatever. For example, read the sentence, "Mr. 
Chamberlain's house in Labrador burned down last night." 
You understand the sentence, and seem to be thinking of Mr. 
Chamberlain's house. But immediately after reading the words 
you probably had no imaginary mind picture of this particular 
house. How then is it possible for you to understand the 
sentence and to seem to be thinking of Mr. Chamberlain's 
house? The answer is that you are thinking, not of Mr. 
Chamberlain's house, but only in a very general way, of im- 
pressions of other houses you have seen! 

While this kind of thinking saves energy and under cer- 
tain conditions serves an important purpose in life, it is a 
serious mistake, when the line of thought is very important, 
to permit it to take the place of that other kind of thinking 
in which you would at once vividly form by imagination a 
special image to represent the object thought of. It is entirely 
proper, however, to employ the former kind of thinking tem- 
porarily until you decide whether the ideas and the purpose 



28 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

for which they are to be used justify the forming of special 
images. This power of temporarily using impressions and 
ideas we have, as substitutes for similar impressions and ideas 
which we do not possess, we have named Substitutional Think- 
ing. 

To restate the case: If the fact of the burning of Mr. 
Chamberlain's house is not at all important to the reader, 
substitutional thinking should be employed. If very important, 
it should not be employed, but instead the reader should con- 
struct a mental image to represent this particular house in the 
condition and under the circumstances required by the sen- 
tence. Many persons will be able to form a picture at once. 
Others will find it at first difficult or impossible to do so. In 
such cases the power may be attained by mental development. 
The danger referred to is this : We are liable to depend upon 
substitutional thinking when on the other hand we should 
grow our minds and add to our permanent mental power by 
forming additional images and perfecting new ideas. For 
vital reasons, which will become clear as we proceed, we 
must not permit ourselves to assume, as is so commonly done, 
that because we have vivid pictures of many different houses 
or of other objects we therefore have a vivid impression of any 
particular house or object that may be referred to in literature 
or elsewhere. One who is able to employ both kinds of think- 
ing and who knows when to use one and when the other has 
reached a high state of mental power and is in possession of 
most valuable scientific knowledge. 

With a perfect impression as a standard, let us further 
test our average impressions to discover how nearly they cor- 
respond to what they are intended to represent. We will 
suppose that a man desires to test his mental photograph of 
the City of London. He must therefore ask himself questions 



SUBSTITUTIONAL THINKING 29 

regarding his London impression with the standard impres- 
sion of the bird in mind. He is not to ask whether he can 
think of London substitutionally, but whether he possesses a 
particular mental picture of that great city, a picture that 
represents London and no other city, and how nearly perfect 
the picture is from the standpoint of the elements. Assum- 
ing that he has such a picture he will next inquire whether 
he can see with his mind's eye the whole of London as a 
full-sized city. Does his picture contain many of the probable 
colors of London? He should question himself further as 
follows: "What are the colors of the Parliament Buildings?" 
"Do I hear the sounds of London?" "What sounds do I 
hear in the Bank of England?" "What is the direction from 
London Bridge to Hyde Park?" "Do I see the internal Lon- 
don?" "Do I see the workings of its institutions, of its fac- 
tories, schools, shops, law courts, as vividly as if I were 
actually there and observing these places?" If his picture 
of London contains all of these elements then his impression to 
this degree is perfect. This same principle applies to all of 
the external and internal elements. 

Assuming that we have now carried this imaginary test en- 
tirely through the various external and internal elements, let us 
ask the vital questions : How nearly perfect, on the average, 
are man's impressions ? Do they possess all of the external and 
internal elements according to the requirements of the stand- 
ard? 

These are the most important questions that can be asked 
of man. His impressions of things he has observed possess 
on the average only a small percentage — say five or ten per 
cent. — of the elements; of the things of which he has only 
heard or read the percentage is less; of the X-ray elements 
the number is not over one per cent. 



30 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

It is possible to add to man's average impressions the 
missing elements, and thus improve his impressions many fold. 
What effect this improvement will have on his mind, character 
and work we will endeavor to show. 



CHAPTER VI. 
SEED GROWTH. 

Impressions and the mind in general may be improved 
not only by adding the missing elements, but we are now 
to unfold a law by which their power may be yet further in- 
creased. We will illustrate the principle by which it is ac- 
complished. Imagine a hundred thousand soldiers of the 
average mental and physical grade scattered over the country 
and but a single soldier in any one place. A general desires 
to transform these scattered men into an army. He first 
directs that each soldier shall be developed physically and 
mentally into an ideal man. This is done and it is found that 
each man is many times more of a soldier than he was before 
and that the hundred thousand scattered soldiers are now 
equivalent to several hundred thousand of the unimproved 
kind. Their minds are more efficient and their hearts are 
more intensely patriotic. They have bodies of greater skill 
and endurance and they are expert with the gun and sword. 
This improvement of the individual soldiers corresponds to 
the improvement of imperfect impressions in the human mind 
from the standpoint of the elements as just outlined. 

Can anything be done to further increase the fighting 
power of these men? No matter how perfect the separate 
soldiers may be, if they remain separate and scattered over 
the country they do not constitute an army and would be 
worth little in battle. In this scattered condition it would 
require but two or three properly trained soldiers of an enemy 



32 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

in fighting each of these separate men to annihilate the entire 
hundred thousand. 

These hundred thousand soldiers must be united to form 
an army, and in this united condition they must be trained 
according to the laws of organized warfare. When this is 
done the fighting power of the hundred thousand men will 
be increased many thousands of times. We may improve 
each of our scattered impressions from the standpoint of the 
elements, color, sound, etc., to the hundred per cent, standard 
and by so doing accomplish marvels for ourselves, but another 
great thing would yet remain to be done. These impressions 
now perfected must be combined by the law of association 
to form connected groups of impressions or Perfected Ideas, 
and these perfected ideas must again be combined into a com- 
plete mind, into a united, organized army of perfected ideas 
which can work singly or in combination, as the need of the 
moment requires. 

An ideal army is an organism, a great fighting monster, 
animated, directed by a central force, represented by the 
general in charge. The ideal mind composed of improved 
impressions properly combined into perfected ideas is also 
a mighty organism of power controlled by some dominant 
purpose. The extent to which impressions may be com- 
bined by association depends on the extent to which they 
possess the elements, color, sound, etc. As undeveloped im- 
pressions are composed of a small percentage of the elements 
it follows that they can be combined to only a slight degree. 
Suppose a man to have a thousand impressions of the average 
undeveloped grade, containing say ten per cent, of the ele- 
ments and associated correspondingly. When any one of 
these impressions is used the man would be impelled by the 
ten degrees of energy in this single impression, reinforced 



SEED GROWTH 33 

to a slight extent by the energy in the few impressions con- 
nected with it. (See Chapter XVIII.) If now each of these 
thousand impressions were perfected he would be impelled 
at any one time by a hundred degrees of energy. // in ad- 
dition they were all so closely associated that when any one 
impression is used the entire thousand would reinforce this 
one should the man so desire, he zvould then be impelled not 
merely by ten or a hundred degrees, but by thousands of de- 
grees of energy and the effectiveness of his work would be 
correspondingly increased. 

There is but one fundamental principle underlying true 
education. This principle may perhaps be suggested by the 
word centralization. It consists first in putting into each 
mental impression as a nucleus, centralizing in it, all of the 
elements, color, etc., that belong to the impression; secondly, 
it consists in a similar manner in connecting with each of 
these impressions, centralizing in them all of the other im- 
pressions and connected groups of impressions or ideas that 
properly belong to any particular impression or nucleus. More 
briefly stated, it includes the centralization of elements in 
impressions and of all other impressions and ideas possible 
in the same impression. The central impression or nu- 
cleus WITH ITS ASSOCIATED IMPRESSIONS AND IDEAS CONSTI- 
TUTES a Perfected Idea. 

Starting outside of the mind in the world about us, we 
have all of its material forces, heat and cold, motion, etc., 
focusing, centralizing themselves in the human mind in the 
form of impressions, and secondly, within the brain, we again 
have all of these impressions thus formed centralizing them- 
selves in one another and forming ideas. The possession of a 
sufficient number of perfected ideas constitutes a complete 
mind. The failure of students and teachers to apply this law 



34 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

of centralization in the lessons of all branches is the basic 
cause of all other defects in education and hence also in hu- 
man life. Until this law becomes a fuller practical realization 
in teaching, study, thinking, and living, all other secondary 
remedies will correspondingly fail. 



CHAPTER VII. 
GOD, UNIVERSE, MAN. 

We now have before us four facts: Man; the growth of 
man through the completion and development of his mind; 
the completion and growth of his mind through perfected 
ideas; perfecting ideas by the various elements flowing to the 
brain through the seven senses accompanied by the application 
of the law of association. 

The entire process by which the universe in the form of 
the elements reaches the mind is called observation or per- 
ception. Since the elements and the blood (see chapter 
XVIII) constitute the raw materials of the mental powers 
and come from nature, are a part of nature, let us inquire 
more particularly into what we call nature. The material 
world has ever been an unsolved riddle, a bewildering mystery. 
The mere fact that anything exists is perhaps hopeless of 
human solution. How did things come to be? We will as- 
sume that an Infinite Power created the universe. This, of 
course, only shoves the mystery a step further back, but it 
gives our thinking a starting point. It is then this universe 
of a hundred million worlds with which observation and 
imagination have to deal. It is upon this universe that the 
human mind depends for the raw materials of its growth. 
The animal and vegetable kingdoms and men feed upon na- 
ture. They reach a cetain stage of development as a conse- 
quence. The standard of growth attained by any plant or 



36 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

animal depends on what it absorbs from nature. The plant 
takes in a few of the elements such as temperature, moisture, 
light, color, to some extent, and certain substances from the 
soil. According to what it takes in so is it. Some plants take 
in more than others and are therefore higher orders of plants. 
Animals assimilate more elements than plants, such as sound, 
odor, location, distance, motion, resistance, taste, more of 
color, etc., and consequently are higher growths than plants. 
Some animals have a higher capacity for feeding on nature 
than others and are higher animal products. The dog absorbs 
more than the chicken, the horse more than the cow, the 
chicken more than the worm. Man not only takes in more 
of the elements but absorbs more of each than animals do. 
Certain animals, because of the necessities of their lives, de- 
velop certain sense channels to a much higher degree than man, 
as the sense of odor in the dog, sight in the eagle, and hearing 
of certain animals. Man is greater because he takes in more 
and he takes in more because he is greater. In the associa- 
tional elements man is far superior, though animals have this 
to some extent. As plants and animals vary in grades of 
growth according to the elements they absorb, so the different 
degrees of power in men are traced to the same source. 

The universe is the work of an intelligent Being. His 
fundamental principle of operation is peculiar in the fact that 
His creations seem to partake of His own nature. The parent 
brings forth the child. The child is necessarily more or less 
like the parent. The universe is the child of God. Plants in 
their birth are not separated from their parent, Nature. Ani- 
mals seem to be separated but they cannot disconnect them- 
selves from nature without loss of life. While man can 
separate himself from his human father and mother he can- 
not isolate himself from his nature parent. Animals, vege- 



GOD, UNIVERSE, MAN 37 

tables, man, in order to live must remain in contact with nature. 
They feed on it. In nature they live, move, and have their 
being. But we must go one step further back. If we cannot 
live apart from nature, nature cannot exist apart from God. 
God is in nature, nature is in us. We are all a part of God 
and we lift our grateful hearts and sing, "In Him we live and 
move and have our being." 

But this is only another way of saying that as much as there 
is of us is that much of God. God is truth. The less there is 
of us the less of truth we are. There are degrees of truth 
both as to quality and quantity. The plant is truth as far as 
it goes. The animal is the embodiment of more truth than 
the plant, man is the incarnation of more than the animal. 
Plants have evolved from lower to higher degrees of truth 
embodiment to their present state, and they are capable of 
higher growth by the aid of man. The same is true of animals. 
Should it not be true of man ? 

We feed on God, that is on truth. The elements are em- 
anations of God passing through the seven sense channels to 
the soid of man, nourishing him on divine truth. Blessed 
be color, light, sound, odor, and all the rest of the divine in- 
flux. Observation is the inrush of God to us that there may 
be more of Him in us. It is a many-sided process by which 
the elements from the heart of nature and God reach the 
human soul, by which they pass from what is called matter to 
what is called mind. Trees grow from the materials in their 
surroundings. There is nothing in the tree, except its life 
germ, that did not come from the soil, atmosphere, light, heat, 
moisture. In embryo form man inherits the life principle. 
Feeding the body and transforming food into muscle and bone 
is a wonderful process, but feeding the soul on the divine 
manifestations, transforming them into human thought, truth 



38 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

and spirit, is more wonderful. "The heavens declare the glory 
of God, and the earth showeth His handiwork." Nature is 
holy and every part of it is intended to fulfill a divine pur- 
pose in human life. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

A PERFECTED IDEA OF A RIVER. 

A perfected mental impression is then the immediate goal 
of the forces in the outside world. Objects are photographed 
on the mind by observation, and every mental picture is to 
be connected by association with every other picture and idea 
in the mind. The mind world is to be a duplicate of the earth, 
of the world of matter. This is the first stage of education. 

Another condition necessary to the growth of ideas must 
be explained. Material vegetation is the product of soil, moist- 
ure, light, air, right temperature. A tree is produced by a 
seed and an environment. In somewhat the same manner 
perfected ideas are the outgrowth of a mental environment. 
As the acorn is planted in the soil and surrounded by other 
necessary elements in the landscape as air, light, etc., so the 
nucleus of the idea must be planted in a mental landscape. 
A mental picture of a rose-bush would be the nucleus of the 
perfected rose-bush idea. This nucleus must be planted, lo- 
cated, pictured as growing from a mental landscape, corre- 
sponding in general to the physical landscape or environment 
surrounding a physical plant, which we term the concrete 
basis of the idea, the mental soil from which the nucleus is 
to grow. A material rose-bush growing from material soil 
in the midst of a lawn is part of the entire earth, and in cer- 
tain particulars the entire universe contributes to its growth. 
And so ideally considered the mind landscape in which the 
rose-bush idea is to grow includes a life-sized vision of the 



40 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

entire earth with as much as possible of the regions surround- 
ing the earth. The vividness of the nucleus of the rose-bush 
idea depends upon the vividness and completeness of the mental 
landscape out of which, as it were, the rose-bush idea is to grow, 
of the lawn and its surroundings at least to the horizon, and of 
all of the elements, color, etc., composing this landscape, 
including the conditions of the sky. Somewhat as the water 
of the material river comes from a wide area over the earth 
and ocean, so the growth of the river idea is dependent on a 
mental vision of a large section of the earth. Its growth will 
be all the more luxuriant if the student possesses a perfected 
vision of the entire earth. To see vividly the river from end 
to end the student must first see the country from end to end 
through which the river is to flow. An eighteen element river 
nucleus can flow only through an eighteen element concrete 
basis. 

That the reader may yet more clearly understand how ob- 
servation, imagination and association are employed in per- 
fecting any subject whatever, we will briefly sketch the river 
idea. The reader is supposed to, be working out the idea of 
a river not as an oratorical nor as a literary production, but 
for the purpose of mental growth. An author or any profes- 
sional person, as well as those interested in their own develop- 
ment, should possess the river idea as completely as we shall 
suggest it, with all of the implied elements and associations, but 
how they would use the idea professionally, how far in detail 
they would enter in describing it to others are matters not 
included in the purpose of this book. In applying the sug- 
gestions as to the idea of a river each impression is to be 
vividly imagined externally and internally and substitutional 
thinking is not to be employed with any important phase of 
the subject. 



A PERFECTED IDEA OF A RIVER 41 

The dead leaves thickly strew the ground on the southern 
side of a forest-covered mountain. Far above the timber line 
its summit is hidden in ice and snow. Similar peaks stretch 
northward in a bleak and barren vista of white. At the foot 
of the mountain is an undulating plain extending hundreds of 
miles below the dim horizon to another range of mountains 
beyond which for two thousand miles rolls a vast agricultural 
country to the sea. 

It is a balmy, almost cloudless June morning. Forest odors 
scent the atmosphere of the mountain. A gentle breeze 
rustles the leaves of the trees. In the distance are heard the 
chirp of a squirrel and the notes of birds. At the base of a 
large tree standing somewhat alone is a slight depression in 
the ground. From its upper side among the fallen leaves are 
trickling drops of clear water, filling the tiny basin and slowly 
overflowing from its lower side. The little stream thus formed 
passes hesitatingly downward a few inches, is diverted this 
way and that by various small obstacles and has now almost 
disappeared under bits of decaying foliage. Again appearing 
it is reinforced by another similar stream and a foot below it 
approaches its first precipice an inch deep and drops over into 
a little pool with a scarcely audible splash. Here, rudderless 
and pilotless, is a fleet of leaves drifting before the wind. 
The water again overflows and passes down the mountain 
side. A few rods below the stream is doubled in size. Its 
progress has become more rapid, curving around trunks of 
trees, pushing its zigzag course among scattered rocks, filling 
great holes and overflowing, it passes onward. Numerous 
small streams have joined it when it finally enters the plain 
below. 

An expanse of green meadows on both sides of the brook 
extends almost to the sky line. Groups of cattle feed along 



42 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

the winding stream and colonies of insects find their homes 
in its waters and on its banks. A few miles farther onward 
human habitation appears ; farm buildings are seen ; fields of 
growing grain and a small village. Some distance beyond the 
stream passes through a narrow and rather deep valley, at 
the lower end of which is built a great wall of concrete, 
damming the water and diverting it in many directions for 
irrigation and manufacturing. It had been known by various 
youthful names, but now, much deeper and wider, and nearing 
the mountains, hundreds of miles away, it is at last chris- 
tened a river. Flowing and winding gracefully with increas- 
ing momentum, slowly, silently, majestically, through nearly 
level landscapes, it enters the narrow passes of the mountain, 
crowding through deep gorges, rushing, swirling, dropping 
suddenly and dashing and thundering over a great precipice. 
After many days of similar experiences, it emerges from the 
mountains and enters upon its final journey of two thousand 
miles. Brooks, creeks, and other rivers join it from time to 
time. In great sweeps and curves, through a densely popu- 
lated country, now narrow and deep or broad and more shal- 
low, in revolving eddies and head-long rushings, its movement 
ever forward, its shores at last invisible to each other, the 
river and its individuality are lost in the sea. 

Thousands of miles of ever moving water ! What a hum- 
ble beginning, how it grew, what an end ! Imagine its ever- 
changing motions, flowing in many directions from mountain 
peak to ocean. Through what transformations of color in the 
flowering spring, in the ripening summer, in the dying autumn 
and in the dead, white winter ! Now it is warm and plunging, 
now cold and rigid in an icy death. What varieties of weather, 
of temperature and climate, of days, nights and seasons ! 
Listen to its myriad voices; its first audible drip, its murmur, 



A PERFECTED IDEA OF A RIVER 43 

its deafening roar as thousands of tons of water fall over a 
precipice. 

Whence came the river? Ask the ocean, inquire of the 
sun, of heat, of evaporation, of the clouds, of the wind, of 
gravitation, of the rain. 

On its bosom, at its birth on the mountain peak, floating 
bits of bark and dead leaves; in the valley a light canoe, and 
beyond the mountains of the plains, ocean liners and battle- 
ships of steel ! By the little stream at the foot of the moun- 
tain peak a herder's tent ; by the brook a cottage ; by the creek 
a town, and on the river shores vast cities stretch away. Des- 
erts and death valleys, now luxuriant beyond imagination. 
Its generated electric energy throughout great belts of country 
on both shores illumine night into the brightness of day; ten 
thousand factories spring to life and a million happy homes; 
endless lines of railway transport products of factory and 
farm, and in Pullman palaces untold multitudes journey sum- 
mer and winter ; a vast territory is purified, beautified, and 
transformed, a nation's wealth and population are doubled. 

And so across the continent, each with its marvelous pecu- 
liarities, its ever-changing experiences of cold and heat, of 
sound and silence, turmoil and peace, destruction and bene- 
diction, have been flowing for unnumbered centuries and so 
will continue to flow for ages to come earth's mighty rivers. 

Rivers have permeated and influenced not only every ma- 
terial aspect of civilization but their effects have reached the 
human mind and heart. They have been a prominent factor in 
man's scientific and esthetic development. They have flashed 
upon his imagination visions of wealth, touched the springs of 
his ambition and his hope, attracted multitudes to their shores, 
to blight with disappointment or to inspire and gratify with 
dazzling realization. 



44 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

While these great material streams of water are fulfilling 
their missions, their analogues in other realms are paralleling 
or surpassing the rivers in the vastness of their destinies. 
Among these are rivers of the moving atmosphere, of the flow- 
ing clouds, of the streams of light from the reservoir of the 
sun; there are wider streams of vegetable and animal life 
moving slowly onward; streams of people from home, com- 
munity, tribe and nation, flowing, enlarging, branching and re- 
uniting; of bird, insect and animal migration; of commerce 
and business, of manufacturing and transportation, all min- 
gling, crossing and recrossing one another. There are the 
streams of progress in science, discovery, invention, education, 
art, religion, with its sub-currents of the denominations. Man's 
life is a stream wide or narrow, long or short, shallow or deep, 
now agitated, now reposeful. Mental growth begins feebly and 
broadens to a powerful stream flooding and enriching the land- 
scape of the mind. 

All streams and rivers everywhere, literal and analogical, 
material, mental, and spiritual, scientific, esthetic, commercial, 
educational, moral and religious, and the river ideas in human 
minds in which the ideas have been perfected are all in simulta- 
neous movement; the rivers in the mountain ever beginning, 
the same rivers in the ocean ever ending; the undying life be- 
tween; birth, life, death, in rhythmic, synchronous progress; 
the sublime stream of the ages ; the river of the ever moving 
universe; the panorama of the freighted worlds, all flowing 
together and forever into the ocean of the infinite. 



CHAPTER IX. 
PERFECTED IDEAS. 

If the river idea has now reached that condition and stage 
of development from which it will continue to grow sponta- 
neously, producing new thoughts and associations as long as 
the brain remains in a healthy state, then the central object 
of perfecting ideas will have been attained. 

On the same principle other subjects such as mother, coun- 
try, peace, liberty, art, city, progress, culture, etc., may be per- 
fected; the individual's knowledge, facts, scattered impres- 
sions and experiences regarding any subject, vivified, organized, 
and transmuted into ideas. His knowledge of a subject will 
then exist in his mind, not as vague substitutional information 
disconnected in all vital ways with personality and character, 
but as a living, centralized knowledge organism. Any idea thus 
grown will unite itself to a greater or less extent with many 
others and thus enlarged, these will again combine and so on 
indefinitely. For example, after the idea of progress is per- 
fected, the two developed ideas of river and of progress can be 
so intimately connected as to form a single compounded idea 
which may be used to a great degree either as the idea of river 
or of progress. Under the same conditions this compound idea 
may become an organic part of such other ideas as education 
and civilization, and so on until the entire mind becomes one 
great synthetic idea. In perfecting and concreting an abstract 
subject the same plan is pursued, except that the internal 
qualities of the subject are usually incarnated in an imaginary 



46 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

person or in a personified material object, and its outward 
manifestations embodied in the actions of the person or per- 
sonified object under the influence of the idea. 

It is not meant that absolutely all ideas are to be as fully 
perfected as that of the river as we have outlined it, but all 
impressions having anything of consequence to do with the 
success of a man's personal, professional, or business life, 
should be so perfected. Neither is this statement to be inter- 
preted narrowly as the life of an ideal business or professional 
man includes a wide range of ideas not directly connected 
with his vocation. The broader a man's knowledge, if the 
ideas composing it are perfected, the more nearly ideal will he 
be and the greater will be his success. 

One of the many important merits of the application of this 
law of study is its ultimate economy of time. To perfect the 
first few ideas will, of course, require considerable time, de- 
pending on the condition of the mind ; but each succeeding idea 
will be perfected more quickly and with less conscious effort 
until finally, when the mind has become complete, very much 
less time and effort will be necessary. The scientific reasons 
for this are first that the same general outline for perfecting 
ideas applies more or less closely to all subjects, as ideas, 
like trees, all grow according to the same general principles; 
secondly, all ideas have much in common, overlapping to such 
an extent that in elaborating one, many other connected ideas 
are at the same time partially perfected. In the third place, 
there is great saving of time and effort because of the effect 
upon memory, as perfected ideas are never permanently for- 
gotten. 

A perfected idea is not, therefore, a mere flash of thought, 
a simple impression or general notion, but it is a great mental 
reality, a vast organism of impressions. What is here termed 



PERFECTED IDEAS 47 

mental development consists in growing the organism by per- 
fecting the nucleus and grafting into the nucleus by association 
all other related impressions. The nucleus of the perfected 
river idea consists of the impression of the river itself from 
source to ocean. Its second part includes all impressions and 
ideas connected by association with the nucleus. Neither one 
nor many illustrations can give a true vision of the appear- 
ance to the possessor of a perfected idea but illustrations are 
at least suggestive. The nucleus with its connected impres- 
sions and ideas resembles in some respects a vast telegraph 
or telephone system, or perhaps a better illustration is that 
of a closely woven fabric, the threads corresponding to brain 
nerves all capable of sending and receiving messages. Imagine 
many nerves converging in many different spots forming nuclei, 
and think of the entire net work of brain nerves, nuclei, asso- 
ciated impressions and ideas vibrating together in harmony, 
and of this vibratory momentum as a mighty force propelling 
the man towards a definite object! All minds grow on the 
same general principle of nucleus and associations. The dif- 
ference between a substitutional and an ideal mind is funda- 
mentally one of degree and not of principle. But this differ- 
ence in degree is so vast, so complex and far-reaching in its 
consequences, as to amount practically to a difference in prin- 
ciple as well as of degree. A substitutional mind is an in- 
complete mind. 

The circumstances of most lives are such that at least one 
and frequently several ideas become quite highly developed. 
Were these minds to receive adequate scientific training at the 
proper time their developed ideas would in time be duplicated 
in others more highly perfected. But as few receive the 
necessary instruction at this crucial stage the minds sooner 
or later follow the line of least resistance, settle back upon 



48 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

substitutional thinking and instead of growing, mental activity 
merely moves in a circle and repeats itself. 

Like a landscape consisting of all kinds of vegetation from 
great trees to small plants, so ideas of the same thing in dif- 
ferent minds vary in degrees of growth. Two persons looking 
at the same object do not necessarily obtain equally complete 
impressions. In one mind the idea might be exceedingly small, 
in the other very large. A child seeing for the first time a 
river would obtain an impression, but how small, vague and 
simple compared to that of the mother by its side, or of the 
father, a world traveler, who had navigated many of earth's 
largest streams ! Should the child attempt to associate its river 
nucleus with other impressions, few connections could be 
formed for two reasons, first because its nucleus or simple 
river image possesses few elements or points to which asso- 
ciations could be attached, and secondly because its mind 
contains a very limited number of other ideas with which to 
form associations. 

Because of a very important law of mind growth the degree 
of perfection of new ideas formed in the mind tends to con- 
form to the state of growth of those already in the mind. We 
might term a man's average ideas as to growth his standard 
ideas. People are liable to accept as their standard such ideas 
as the accidental circumstances and experiences of their lives 
happen to supply. Here is a critical period in any human 
life. If the standard is low and not raised by special develop- 
ment all new ideas will conform to the low standard. By 
special development, however, the standard may be raised. 
Before the individual enters upon a course of instruction in 
any direction in preparation for his life work he should apply 
the laws of mind development to his present ideas and thus 
greatly extend their average growth and raise their standard. 



PERFECTED IDEAS 49 

His proposed vocational course will then be immeasurably 
more valuable. A man with a very ordinary mind residing 
in one locality and neither reading nor traveling will have a 
very low standard of ideas. He will so continue to the end 
unless his ideas are developed by special scientific effort. 
Ordinary reading and travel will bring little relief. On the 
other hand a man inheriting a great mind, who reads and 
travels, will grow a high standard of ideas without special 
development, though by no means as high as can be attained 
by scientific training. 



CHAPTER X. 

PERFECTED IDEALS. 

There are two grades of ideas in the cultivated human 
mind, a lower and a higher grade. The first consists of ideas 
of things as they are, the second of conditions as we desire 
them to be. The first are formed generally by observation 
and partly by imagination and are called ideas ; the second are 
the product almost entirely of imagination and reflection, and 
are called ideals. There is no difference in principle between 
them. Let us assume for a moment that a man has reached 
the point at which his mind has received from the universe 
all that it is possible for it to receive and that the law of 
association has properly combined all of his ideas. Man is 
what he is at this imaginary stage through the power of his 
ideas. Must his growth here cease? Can nothing more be 
done for him? Fortunately, at this point a higher grade of 
ideas begins to appear. The outside world usually furnished 
the material of the first grade. Ideas themselves are to be the 
main source of the second grade. When we are able to put 
an ideal into actual practice it is customary to cease calling it 
an ideal and to speak of it as an idea, thus confining the word 
ideal to those conceptions which we are unable as yet to put to 
practical application. The idea of kindness that we practice to- 
day was our ideal some time before. Today we have a higher 
ideal of kindness than the idea we apply. We are unable to 
practice our ideal because it is not sufficiently perfected. Per- 



PERFECTED IDEALS 5 I 

fected ideals, like perfected ideas, apply themselves and are 
practical. According to the degree of perfection of ideas, 
so will our work be. The same is true of all action, material, 
moral, esthetic, to which our ideals guide and propel us. 
Some people merely think of what they should do, others think 
and talk of it, others think and act. These three degrees of 
expression are the results of different degrees of development 
of the ideals prompting the thinking, talking or action. Ideals 
and ideas are subject to the same general laws of growth. 
That we may be practical we must perfect, not only our ideas, 
but our ideals also. As we may have a mere substitutional 
notion of an idea that is not put into practice so we may have 
a substitutional ideal that we cannot apply. It has been almost 
universally assumed that man is unable to apply his ideals 
because they are too high. The difficulty does not reside in 
their height, but in their imperfect development from the 
standpoint of the elements and association. It is as easy to 
put into practice a perfected high ideal as a perfected low one. 
If the ideal of honesty is as fully developed in a man's brain 
as the idea of unkindness it will be as natural for him to be 
honest as to be unkind. Or to state the case more paradoxi- 
cally, it is easy to practice a high perfect ideal and impossible 
to apply a low very imperfect one. If our ideal of kindness 
were more nearly perfected we should at once become more 
kind. 

We have lectured people about what they did or did not 
do and advised, perhaps threatened them as to what they ought 
to do. But if we do no more than this for the average man 
little will be accomplished for him. It frequently happens, to 
be sure, that the person advised has an ideal quite highly per- 
fected and the influence of the advice added just what was 
needed to render the ideal practical. Under such conditions 



52 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

good advice is valuable. But where advice fails, the laws of 
perfecting ideals must be applied to the man's weak ideals. 

We will suppose that the reader has a high but undeveloped 
ideal of kindness. He knows substitutionally that he should 
be more kind but his ideal instead of being approximately 
perfected, consists of nothing more real than a number of 
substitutional thoughts about kindness. By means of imagi- 
nation he will picture vividly as the nucleus and embodiment 
of the ideal a highly developed man living and practicing a 
life of kindness; by association he will connect many other 
ideas and ideals with this picture of a kind man, especially 
ideas of the advantages of kindness. In imagining the man's 
life the reader is first to perfect a concrete basis and the im- 
pression of his home; then in the same way he is to perfect 
the idea of the man himself, of his business, his social and 
domestic life. 

The reader may begin somewhat as follows : In a large city 
in midwinter the streets and buildings are covered with snow. 
The student is to complete this suggestion of a concrete basis. 
On one of the streets is a fine red brick dwelling. A tall man 
of dark complexion in a gray suit is ascending the front steps. 
Leaving the cares and responsibilities of his great commer- 
cial affairs behind him, he opens the door, passes to the sitting- 
room and greets his wife and family. It required but a glance 
for him to realize that as a result of many social and household 
duties, his wife, though making heroic efforts to conceal the 
fact, is much exhausted. She was about to proceed to the 
dining-room when he insisted that everything be left to him. 
At dinner all feel the warmth of his heart in many suggestive 
ways. The telephone rings and he learns of the sudden illness 
of his bookkeeper. He visits the man, remains with him a 
few minutes, asks that he be called in the morning and returns 



PERFECTED IDEALS 53 

home. With this hint the reader is to continue to imagine 
vividly the actions of the man's life in all situations where kind- 
ness can be practiced. Assuming this to have been done we 
are ready for the application of the law of association, the 
object of which is to reinforce the nucleus of the ideal of 
kindness to such a degree that the reader, perfecting the ideal, 
will be impelled to put it into practice. While the nucleus, 
if perfected by imagination from the standpoint of the ele- 
ments, but without this reinforcement, would express itself 
in various useful ways, it would not necessarily be sufficiently 
powerful to cause the reader to perform deeds of kindness 
under all kinds of circumstances, especially should this ideal be 
opposed by others leading in contrary directions. What then 
are the special results and advantages which the reader should 
connect with the nucleus of this ideal? We indicate first the 
more personal results. 

If the reader's mental growth extended no further than that 
produced by ideas it would still be relatively limited ; but where 
his growth as a result of ideas ceases, as a result of ideals it 
begins. As there is no limit to the growth of ideals there will 
be none to his development. In perfecting and practicing any 
ideal he is therefore greatly benefiting himself educationally 
as well as serving others. 

As will be shown later ideas have an important bearing 
upon health, and when the numerous ways in which they act 
upon the body and its functions are clearly seen it will be real- 
ized that in proportion as ideals are higher than ideas their 
benefit to health will be greater. 

All positive ideas in proportion to their degree of perfection 
(see chapter XXI) add to the beautiful in expression. It 
follows that the effect of ideals in this direction will be cor- 
respondingly greater. The man not entirely honest tends to 



54 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

be more beautiful than if dishonest. If he becomes ideally 
honest his beauty of expression will be increased. Ideals 
belong to the realm of the relatively perfect, and for this 
reason have a marked effect on personal beauty. The ideal of 
kindness is specially beneficial in this regard, and will con- 
tribute its peculiar elements to the expression of the human 
face, body and voice. 

Ideals are either repellent or attractive (chapters XXI and 
XXII). The ideal of kindness is strong in attractive power, 
and will increase the reader's ability to draw people. 

Note what is stated in chapter XIII as to the relation of 
perfected ideas to thinking, and it will be seen how ideals add 
to intellectual power. 

Because ideals are especially reinforced as already indi- 
cated, they increase the sum of emotional power. (Chapter 
XVII.) 

This increased volume of emotion adds just so much to will 
power and to strength of character. (Chapter XX.) 

Culture means the artistic, refined and relatively perfect 
human life. A man of high perfected ideals is a man of 
culture. Ideals refine all phases of a man's life. 

Ideals being generally esthetic in their nature and consti- 
tuting a legitimate aristocracy in the mind increase self-respect. 

Perfected ideas express themselves in action and in the life 
work as well as in the character. Ideals do the same and as 
'they are of a higher grade than ideas, they produce a higher 
quality of work. 

As there is no part of life which ideals may not influence, 
their results taken as a whole mean a new and higher life. 

We are next to state a few of the more external advantages. 

A man's influence is due to all things that make up his life, 
such, for example, as knowledge, intellect, feelings, attractive- 



PERFECTED IDEALS 55 

ness, will power. The source of his influence over other people 
is found in ideas and ideals. The more perfect his ideals the 
greater his influence. 

Ideals and ideas work for us. They are the real money 
makers. A man's perfected ideals raise his business gradually 
to a relatively perfect condition. 

A man's relations to people, socially, depend on the compo- 
sition of his ideas and ideals. The ideal of kindness is power- 
ful as a social factor. 

What is stated under general influence and social results 
applies to political results. 

A man's value depends upon what he is, on his relations 
to people, and on what he can do. The new education stands 
primarily for the first of these. Ideas and ideals constitute 
the essence of character. 

Many of the qualities of the highest spiritual nature may be 
traced to the same cause. The ideal of kindness is a prominent 
factor among the sources of the deepest religious nature. 

One of the depressing facts in the lives of many people is 
that the objects and conditions with which they are surrounded 
become commonplace. The man of perfected ideals sees the 
real glory in all things. All objects and conditions inspire him, 
as all things become directly or indirectly inspiring to those 
prepared to appreciate them. 

The outline here followed in reinforcing this ideal may be 
used to a very great extent in perfecting any ideal. If, for 
example, a man is unsystematic he can scientifically grow in 
his mind a perfected ideal of system and order and gradually 
he will become more systematic and more orderly; or if a 
little deficient in honesty it is because his ideal of honesty is 
not sufficiently developed to overbalance all antagonistic ideas 
and ideals and in the same way he can idealize honesty and 



$6 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

thus become more honest. No matter what quality he desires, 
he may gradually attain it by perfecting his ideals. It must, 
of course, be remembered that where a new perfected ideal 
is opposed to some long practiced bad habit, the new ideal 
will require greater length of time to apply itself and to over- 
come the habit than if no such habit existed. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE PERFECTED MIND. 

The ultimate educational purpose of perfecting ideas and 
ideals is the growth of the complete, vivid, synthetic mind. A 
synthetic mind is one whose ideas, thoughts, emotion, ideals, 
are so closely connected, unified, compacted, as to constitute 
a single great idea. A vivid mind is one in which all im- 
pressions are as real, clear, living, as are the landscapes, ani- 
mals, people, and objects in general in the outside world. Let 
us endeavor to gain a more definite notion of such a mind 
by means of an illustration. We will ask the reader to under- 
take an imaginary excursion of many miles into the sky above 
the earth. Stopping at the farther end of the journey, imagine 
yourself in the centre of an immense empty globe or sphere. 
Let this sphere represent your mind before it possessed a 
single idea. You will now proceed to educate your mind. 
How will you begin? What is meant by educating it? We 
mean putting something in it. But what will you put in it? 
You look about you everywhere and find nothing. Later, 
however, you observe far below you a bright object. You 
may find something there. You pass down to it (observation) 
and discover it to be the earth you left shortly before. You 
decide to bring the earth into your hollow sphere and thus 
fill it and educate it. You attempt to do this, but soon dis- 
cover its impossibility. So you return to your empty mind 
home discouraged. You had just reached the centre, and were 
trying to discover some other means of furnishing your mind 



58 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

when you glance to where you are standing and see beneath 
your feet and surrounding you what has every appearance of a 
beautiful lawn containing a few trees, a half dozen horses and 
people walking about. (Mind pictures.) You decide that you 
are dreaming and have not left the earth. But you are soon 
convinced that this is not the earth, for by comparison you 
discover that many things are missing here that you had seen 
on the earth in similar landscapes. It is like the earth, but 
in many respects different. (Imperfect impressions.) This is 
interesting, yet bewildering, for evidently without knowing 
how it happened your mind sphere now has something in it 
in addition to yourself. You are not long in reaching the con- 
clusion that your trip to the earth had something to do with 
this. Before you went to the earth there was nothing here, and 
now there is this little patch of landscape probably two or 
three miles in diameter with numerous objects upon it. An- 
other question occurs to you. Shall you not now settle down 
on this landscape and pass the remainder of your life here? 
You remember this is what many of your friends on earth 
have done. You decide to try it. After a few hours you re- 
call a fact that had previously escaped your notice, that your 
trip to the earth, the short time spent there, was very enjoyable 
and that you were happier there than during the few hours 
since your return. You therefore decide not to settle down, 
but to make another journey to the earth, remain longer and 
finally return. This you do. Three facts are revealed to 
you: you enjoyed the second excursion more than the first; 
your landscape grew considerably during your absence 
(growth), and lastly you realize that you have a miniature 
mind realm, all your own. 

You begin to make comparisons between your mental world 
and the earth you left. You see that the contents of your mind 



THE PERFECTED MIND 59 

realm have the same general appearance of similar things on 
the earth, but that in reality they are entirely different. The 
objects on the earth are solid and heavy, but those about you 
have no tangible substance. They have shape, size, and other 
elements, but while they seem to have perceptible solidity, 
weight, in reality, they do not have. To distinguish between 
the two you name the things on the earth material realities 
and the contents of your mind mental, spirit or psychic realities. 
After much thinking you make what afterwards proves to be 
the most important decision in your experience. You decide 
that you will devote the central energy of your life to furnish- 
ing this great sphere of your mind. After reaching this con- 
clusion it occurs to you that if your mind universe is to con- 
tinue to obtain its furnishings from the earth you should at 
once examine your means of shipping goods (seven senses, 
observation) to determine whether you receive what you order, 
whether the goods reach you in proper condition and suffi- 
ciently rapidly. You examine your mind realm to learn whether 
you receive what you order. There was a beautiful rose-bush 
on the earth that you admired, and you had ordered the spirit 
bush on your last excursion. You decide to test your shipping 
department by comparing the material rose-bush on the earth 
with your mental bush to see if they correspond. You check 
them off as it were and discover that you received but a small 
portion of the rose-bush, that your mental bush is, in fact, 
very incomplete. You make other tests of buildings, horses, 
and the impressions of some friends you had ordered and to 
your surprise there is the same general discrepancy in all of 
them. You realize that you were happier on the earth than 
up here in your mind probably because the objects on the earth 
possess all of the parts belonging to them while your mental 
objects lack many of their elements. You are aware that if you 



60 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

do not remedy this condition you will become dissatisfied in 
your mind home, realizing that your mental furnishings are 
comparatively uninteresting, and that on the earth everything 
is more perfect, and, therefore, much more stimulating. You 
know that you will be compelled to remain at home a great 
deal, and that during this time all of your higher enjoyments 
will have to come from the contents of your mind alone. The 
first thing for you to attend to, therefore, is to repair the 
defects in your transportation facilities. This you do. You 
discover what elements are lacking in your possessions, remedy 
your transportation deficiencies, make additional journeys to 
the earth and bring up the missing parts of your furnishings. 
Because you now receive complete objects (perfected im- 
pressions), the pleasure in your home is greatly intensified. 
But you discover another law in that the greater the number of 
complete objects you obtain (the more you rightly know) from 
the earth, the greater is your enjoyment. You decide therefore 
to continue shipments as long as it adds to your pleasure. It 
is needless to relate how you finally succeed in importing a 
large part of the earth, omitting only certain things of man's 
work that you consider valueless or injurious. As a conse- 
quence, your home interests have greatly deepened. You al- 
ways enjoy the earth excursions, but discover that the real 
cause is due not only to what you see on the earth, but to the 
fact that seeing the objects on earth greatly increases the 
enjoyment of the things in your mind. 

On one of your journeys you make another discovery of 
interest. You find on the earth several important means of 
communication and of travel between some of its objects 
such as country highways, railroads, telegraph lines, telephones. 
This leads you to examine your own possessions to discover 
whether there are similar avenues of intercourse between them. 



THE PERFECTED MIND 6 1 

You find your mind realm in this respect exceedingly imperfect, 
but you learn that you can remedy the deficiency and can 
construct channels of communication that will accomplish re- 
sults even more wonderful than those on earth. Before im- 
porting anything further you therefore open many lines of 
intercourse between the different parts of your realm so that 
no matter where you happen to be, you can hold communion 
in a moment of time with any section of your mind and with 
any object it contains. (Association of ideas, thinking, recollec- 
tion, memory, etc.) These instantaneous messages are sources 
of inexpressible interest, enjoyment, and benefit to you. By 
them you can centralize the combined force of your whole 
kingdom and focus it upon any particular thing you desire 
to do. 

You next discover that as the earth and its atmosphere are 
charged with electricity, so your kingdom and every object in 
it — buildings, animals, people — are also charged with a mighty 
power (feeling), which you can use in a numberless variety 
of ways with vast profit to yourself and to others. 

There was a time when your mind world might have been 
called a mere duplicate of the earth and its objects, as every- 
thing in it was much like similar things on the earth. But this 
period did not continue very long, for one day as you were 
passing over an exceptionally beautiful landscape you realized 
that it was strange to you. (Imagination, Idealization.) You 
could not recall importing it from the earth. Some of the 
buildings and other objects on the lawn were different from 
any you ever saw on the earth. This was a long time ago. Since 
then innumerable strange creations have appeared throughout 
your kingdom until today you have a domain that is not only 
the duplicate of the earth, but contains much that is very differ- 
ent, more beautiful and more valuable. Among these are new 



62 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

landscapes, new buildings, new cities and mountains, new 
plants, new styles of furniture and clothing, new art, music, 
literature, many new inventions and most important of all new 
people. (Ideals, Originality.) 

One of your greatest joys is in the fact that you are now 
again on the earth and that while your body is living physically 
there yet you have not ceased to live mentally in your mind 
kingdom. You have many of the joys of the material earth 
as well as those of your mind realm and each increases the 
pleasure of the other. You are using your mind power to 
benefit yourself and to improve conditions on the earth also. 

There are some conditions on the earth that are not pleasant, 
but they never trouble you, for they cannot enter where you 
are and you do not need to remain with them. You own an 
entire universe beyond language to describe, which moth and 
rust cannot injure, of which neither people nor conditions can 
rob you, a realm daily becoming more powerful, more beautiful, 
more enthralling. And most wonderful of all this universe is 
a part of you. 



CHAPTER XII. 

IMAGINATION. 

The so-called mental faculties are not separate powers of 
the mind but are merely the various things ideas and ideals 
can do. The more highly developed the ideas the stronger all 
their activities or faculties become. When ideas are weak and 
undeveloped there are then certain things they cannot do; 
some of the faculties would practically not exist. It would 
be an incomplete mind. 

Impressions formed by observation are copies of things in 
the outside world. These impressions discharge their energy 
for man's pleasure and reproduce themselves in material forms 
such as buildings, machinery, etc., for the practical advantage 
of himself and others. Man can make nothing unless he has 
an impression to guide and propel him. (Chapters XVI and 
XVII.) But he has made many things that are not reproduc- 
tions of his impressions of things in the outside world. For 
example, the inventions originated by man are not copies of 
things in nature. Where then did he obtain the impressions 
to guide him in constructing his inventions? Has the Creator 
given him another means of forming impressions in addition to 
that of observation? That he has such means is evident. 
Ideas combine not only by association, as buildings are con- 
nected by telephone, but somewhat as blue and yellow colors 
mix and form a new color, green, so ideas combine in a cer- 
tain mysterious way to form new ideas. This process of com- 
pounding ideas to form new ones is called imagination. Imag- 



64 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

ination is the pioneer of invention and discovery. The man 
of observation is a growing man, and contributes much to 
human advancement, but the man of imagination belongs to a 
higher type and accomplishes much more for civilization. 
Imagination begins where observation ends. Before man can 
perform any new act, construct a new object of any kind, 
make advancement in any direction, his imagination must first 
mentally perform the act, construct the object, make the ad- 
vancement. All original work is therefore performed twice, 
once in the mind and once outside of it. Physical labor is the 
legitimate child of its parent mental labor. Mind work is the 
cause, hand- work its effect. The great problem of life, of 
civilization, is so to develop the mind of man that it will have 
the power first to perform in its great experiment station all 
that is desirable in human life and in the world in general. 

Why do some people possess this wonderful power to a 
greater extent than others? The degree of perfection of ideas 
or ideals formed by imagination depends upon the degree of 
perfection of those gained by observation. The number of 
ideas resulting from imagination is determined by the num- 
ber received by observation. In other words, the great power 
of constructive and creative imagination depends upon great 
power of observation. Relatively considered, the really im- 
portant function of observation or perception is to supply 
material for the products of imagination. We are indebted 
therefore to perfected ideas for great power of imagination. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THINKING. 

The region outside of the mind is composed of objects large 
and small, from worlds to atoms. But it contains something 
else in addition. I look at a tree and see that it is growing 
out of the ground, at a picture and see that it is hanging on 
the wall, at a chair and notice that it is standing in a room. 
What is there here besides tree, ground, picture, wall, chair, 
room? What names shall be given to what are expressed by 
the words "out of," "on," "in"? They are called relations. 
There are many kinds of relations between objects and there 
are special names for some of these relations. What is the 
relation of the tree to the ground? It is touching the ground, 
relation of contact. The tree is above the ground, relation of 
position. What are the relations of the ground to the tree? 
It is under the tree, it touches the tree, it produces the tree, 
the last being the relation of cause to effect. What is the 
mutual relation of tree and ground? They are touching each 
other, mutual contact. They are part of a farm, relation of 
part to whole. 

As there are relations between objects in the outside world, 
and as the mind to a greater or less extent is a duplicate of the 
outside world, so there are relations between ideas and be- 
tween different parts of the same idea in the world of mind. 
For example, I have a mental picture of a parlor, and within 
this picture there is a mental picture of an oil painting. What 
is the relation of my image of the parlor to my image of the 



66 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

painting? The image of the parlor contains the image of the 
painting, relation of thing containing to thing contained. They 
are both parts of my image of a house, relation of part to 
whole. 

Relations between the various contents of the mind are called 
thoughts. Seeing or discovering these relations is thinking. 
A thought is a kind of association and thinking is one way of 
associating ideas. There are many kinds of thinking, many 
ways of associating ideas. 

What determines great power in thinking? For illustra- 
tion, take my mental picture of a music room containing a 
mental picture of a piano. What determines how many rela- 
tions I can discover, how many thoughts I can have regarding 
these mental pictures? I see that my picture of the piano is 
black, and my picture of the music room is white, relation of 
color. I am able to have the thought expressed in the sentence. 
"The parlor and the piano are of different colors," because 
my pictures of the room and of the piano each possesses one 
of the elements, color. Had these images not possessed color, 
I could not have seen the relation that one was white and the 
other black, that is, I could not have had the thought expressed 
above. The more of the elements my ideas possess therefore, 
the more thoughts I can have. Great thinking power depends 
upon perfection of ideas and ideals. 

Thinking of ideas and their relations is sometimes called 
reflection. Thinking and reflection mean practically the same 
thing. Ideas are discharged of their feeling (see chapter XIX) 
by thinking of them or reflecting upon them. The more per- 
fect our ideas the more we reflect and the more valuable our 
reflecting becomes. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
MEMORY, RECOLLECTION, CONCENTRATION. 

If ideas did not remain permanently in the mind, but faded 
away after a brief period there would be a continuous waste 
of knowledge and mental power. This would render all high 
development of man, all great work and even happiness largely 
impossible. Greatness depends on accumulation of power un- 
accompanied by serious loss. To accomplish this ideas once 
obtained must remain in the mind. This retention of ideas is 
memory. To be able to use this accumulated power and render 
it effective the attention must be able to pass instantly from 
one part of an idea to another, and from one idea or group 
of ideas to any other group. This is recollection. The laws of 
a good memory and of perfect recollection are the same. The 
more vivid ideas are, the more highly perfected, the more likely 
they are to remain in the mind. The more vivid the ideas the 
more associations may be formed between them, and the 
more direct and numerous the associations the more perfect 
the power of recollection. Because of their vividness the 
mental pictures of our homes are never forgotten. Were all 
ideas as vivid, we should never lose the impression of any- 
thing. We should rarely fail to recall any desired idea. Any 
plan for improving memory and recollection must have for its 
object improvement of ideas. 

The power of holding an idea before the mind as long as its 
presence is needed or of following a long train of reasoning 
without wandering from the subject is of much value. This 



68 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

is called attention or concentration. The law of concentration 
and attention is as follows : We can think of an idea only as 
long as it continues to vibrate. (Chapter XIX.) The more 
perfect an idea the longer it can vibrate, hence, concentration 
depends upon perfected ideas. For the same reason a logical 
train of associated ideas, if the ideas are highly perfected, will 
hold the attention more consecutively and with less vascilla- 
tion than if the ideas constituting the train of thought are 
weak. 

Note: — The subject of Will follows logically as the next faculty to 
be discussed, but it will be more clearly understood after reading 
chapters XVII to XIX, inclusive. 



CHAPTER XV. 
A HUMAN LOCOMOTIVE. 

Since ideas and ideals operating singly and in combination 
determine man's success and earthly destiny, it is in order to 
look briefly into their nature that we may discover to some 
extent how they perform their functions. We will thus gain 
further knowledge of their management and development. 
Man is a human locomotive. Imagine a new engine standing 
in the shop. It is a wonderful machine, but in its present con- 
dition it is useless. Unless something additional is supplied 
it will never move from its present position. To perform the 
work for which it was built two things must be supplied. It 
must have something to guide it in the direction it is to move 
and it must have a force to push it. A track upon which to 
run will guide it, and steam power will propel it and do its 
work. Either of these without the other would be of no value. 

Picture a physically perfect man, standing at the close of his 
boyhood days and at the entrance to manhood. Imagine his 
mind taken from him. He at once becomes motionless and is 
in the condition of the new locomotive before it is placed on 
the track and before steam is generated. That he may become 
more useful there must be something added to move him and 
something to direct his movements. He too must have steam 
and a track, a guiding principle and a propelling power. These 
two elements were taken from him when his mind was re- 
moved. Let his mind return to him. His condition is now 
similar to that of the locomotive after it has reached the track 



JO POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

and sufficient steam has been produced. He now does certain 
things because inner power propels him. He not only does 
specific things, but the particular way in which he performs 
them is the result of his guiding principle. We shall find man's 
guiding element not outside of himself as with the locomotive, 
but both his guiding principle and propelling force will be found 
in his mind. The propelling power of man is feeling. Feeling 
is human steam. The guiding principle includes impressions 
and relations, that is, thought, intelligence, wisdom, intellect. 
Both of these great mind factors, guidance and propulsion, 
reside in ideas. 

In stating that human steam is feeling or emotion we do not 
mean that it is the sensation or the manner in which various 
emotions feel to us, but that it is the energy, the life force in 
the feeling or emotion, that propels us. For convenience, how- 
ever, we will speak of feeling as the energy that pushes men. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE TRACK. 

But man is much more than a locomotive and these two 
elements, the track and steam principles, have many sub-divis- 
ions and numerous applications. In addition to wisdom, intelli- 
gence, and knowledge, various applications of the guiding 
principle are termed common-sense, thinking, reasoning, judg- 
ment ; and the propelling principle includes energy, enthusiasm, 
heart, ambition, inspiration, emotion, will. 

As both of these mental powers which direct man in his 
work and give him the energy that performs all of his 
acts, reside in ideas, it follows that ideas have two aspects. 
When we mentally look at the nucleus of an idea, or at an 
impression or nucleus of an associated idea we call it a picture, 
impression; when we contemplate an idea from its other side, 
we speak of it as feeling, emotion, energy, vibration, etc. Re- 
lations between ideas or parts of ideas are thoughts. 

We have seen that the ideas possessed by people are on 
the average not over ten per cent, perfected. This means that 
their two aspects, guiding intelligence and propelling power 
are similarly undeveloped. It follows consequently that as 
we improve our ideas, we extend our tracks — our thinking, 
reasoning, and at the same time we improve all phases of our 
propelling power. By improving one thing, ideas, we there- 
fore improve everything. By improving ideas zve at the same 
time improve the zvhole mind, the entire man, his complete 
life and advance civilisation! 

To render that phase of the guiding principle which depends 
directly upon impressions more clear, let us further illustrate. 
A cabinetmaker, possessing fully developed ideas, saw in a 



72 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

show window a desk of new design. He examined it carefully 
and formed in his mind a vivid photograph of the desk. With 
this mental desk he returned to his home and made a material 
desk similar to the one in the window. While constructing 
the material desk, the image desk in his mind was a pattern 
that directed, guided his hand in its work. A certain man had 
traveled frequently over a road extending twenty miles through 
the country. On one occasion he was accompanied by a friend 
whose ideas were highly developed and who was consequently 
a good observer. This friend had never been over the road. 
In passing along, the friend observed the road and the ap- 
pearance of the landscape, and formed a complete image of 
both from the beginning to the end of the journey. Some 
months later, with this image of the road and of the landscape 
twenty miles long to guide him, the friend traveled alone over 
the same road without losing his way. 

If the cabinetmaker had formed an imperfect mental pic- 
ture of the desk, the desk that he would have made, being 
guided by this imperfect image, would have matched his im- 
perfect image, but would not have matched the desk in the 
window. Had the friend not closely observed the road and 
landscape for several miles on his first trip he would have 
had a vague image of this part of the road, and on reaching 
this point on his second journey he would have been uncer- 
tain as to what direction to take. 

People who can do things properly have perfect images of 
the things they do. It is impossible for people with imperfect 
images to do perfect things. They can improve their work only 
by improving their images or impressions. The law of per- 
fect work is perfect impressions, perfected ideas. If man's 
ideas are perfect it follows that everything that his ideas guide 
and propel him in doing will be perfect! 



CHAPTER XVII. 

STEAM. 

Many people upon seeing an express train clashing past, 
unscientifically assume that the locomotive is the power that 
pulls the train. It is an effort for the mind to rid itself of this 
error, and to realize that the hidden steam is the energy that 
is doing it all and that the locomotive so far as exerting force 
is concerned, does nothing. Imagine as many as possible of 
the various kinds of engines connected with all varieties of 
machinery over the world, transportation and manufactur- 
ing, steamships, weaving looms, elevators, planing mills. You 
mentally see the swiftly moving wheels of the machinery and 
the great engines back of them and think what inconceivable 
force these engines are exerting, yet in none of them is there 
the slightest power. To realize this imagine the steam or 
whatever form of power is used to be disconnected. At once 
the gradual death of momentum begins and in a short time all 
is silent. If the power in feeling were suddenly removed from 
people, they too would become silent and motionless. Not only 
does the steam in the engine do the work, but the quantity of 
the work performed depends on the degree of steam power 
applied to the engine. Where the power is great the amount 
of work is large. Contrast the vast power necessary to haul 
a freight train, with the slight force that runs an electric fan. 
Likewise there are in different people these same extremes of 
power of feeling. Compare the work accomplished by such 
men as Napoleon or Leonardo de Vinci with that performed 
by ordinary men. 

Few persons ever gain a clear conception of cause and effect 
even in the material world, and it should occasion no surprise 



74 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

that a much smaller number perceive the law in the world 
of mind. "I did it" is a universal expression, but as ordi- 
narily understood it is no more scientific than to say "The ele- 
vator lifts the people." With most people "I" stands not for 
the guiding and propelling principles, but for their physical 
bodies and with only slight reference to their minds. As they 
think that the engine instead of the steam pulls the train, so 
they assume that their bodies do their work. Such a conception 
is fatal to a correct understanding of man. He who fully real- 
izes that it is his mind and not his body that performs his work 
has made a long stride forward in the direction of scientific 
self-knowledge and self-development. 

Human life affords daily examples of the fact that the mind, 
especially that phase of the mind called feeling, has much more 
to do with all kinds of successful work than is ordinarily real- 
ized. Great work, which is any work rightly performed from a 
psychological point of view, depends as much on the feeling 
of the worker as upon his intelligence. One man, as we say, 
puts heart, feeling, into his work and achieves not only better 
results, but performs his work spontaneously and without 
drudgery. Another works without heart. To him work is dull, 
sodden labor, and the product turned out is below what would 
otherwise have been his standard. The kind of feeling called 
inspiration has changed the course of human history. It has 
won battles and the lack of it has lost them. It is as important 
in education to multiply and strengthen the feelings as it is 
to impart knowledge. Teaching and study which overlooks the 
perfecting of ideas, accumulates mere facts, regardless of the 
quality or perfection of the ideas composing the facts, not only 
makes no provision for the all round culture of the emotional 
life of the student but weakens the original feeling possessed 
by inheritance. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

REPLENISHMENT. 

But on what principle do ideas perform their work for man ? 
Without pretending to be scientifically exact and merely for 
the purpose of giving the reader a general notion of what 
seems to be the process pursued by ideas in their work, the 
following is presented. The illustration of the engine is used 
not to prove a case but for suggestiveness. 

The fireman of the locomotive shovels coal on the fire, and 
when the supply of water is low, he refills the water tank. 
The reason for this is plain. The coal and water are rapidly 
consumed in generating steam and additional quantities must 
be supplied from the outside or the engine would stop. Two of 
the elements necessary in manufacturing human steam are food 
and blood. As ideas are busy much of the time doing work for 
us, their steam substance is exhausted, and additional energy 
must be supplied to renew the ideas or they also will stop 
working. The blood is pumped by the heart through the 
arteries and in refined form enters the cells of the brain where 
ideas have their homes, thus renewing the ideas that have ex- 
pended their energy. In the brain cells, the elements, color, 
motion, etc., and the blood meet, and in a mysterious way form 
impressions. Coal is latent or dormant heat. When lying in 
the mine or in the tender of a locomotive its heat is in a dor- 
mant condition ; when burning it is active. In the active con- 
dition the vibrating heat passes into the water, changing it 
^rom the dormant state to steam. The vibrating energy or 



76 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

feeling in ideas when not at work is also dormant ; when doing 
anything it is active. When doing nothing, coal and the ideas 
are not using their dormant heat or feeling, but when working, 
their vibrating substances are consumed. During our waking- 
hours some of our ideas are active and others are inactive. 
Not only the propelling element, but the guiding element is 
dormant when ideas are not working. We probably cannot 
feel, see, nor think of a dormant idea. When a lump of coal 
is combusted the entire lump except the ashes disappears. 
When an idea combusts, explodes, somewhat as a grain of 
powder explodes when touched by a lighted match, that is, 
when its dormant feeling is discharged and thus does work 
for us, only the substance supplied by the blood is consumed, 
but the mental form of the idea remains. The consumed sub- 
stance is resupplied by the blood. This is accomplished mainly 
during sleep. In the brain is illustrated the universal law of 
waste and repair, supply and discharge, going on everywhere 
in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. When energy or ma- 
terial is consumed, additional material must be supplied if 
activity is to continue. We see that this new supply of raw 
material comes from the outside of engines, trees, animals, 
mind. In order to continue the working capacity of the engine, 
the growth of the tree, or the life and growth of the animal, 
raw material from outside must constantly be supplied. In a 
similar way the growth and development of mind depend on 
a supply of outside materials. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

STEAM PRESSURE. 

Steam has power under one condition only. Watch the 
boiling water in a kettle and notice the steam escaping through 
the spout. This steam, after it has passed into the air, has no 
power. Nothing weaker nor less harmful could be conceived. 
But imagine a kettle without a spout and with only a small 
hole through which to pour water. Partly fill such a kettle 
with water. Suppose the hole to be now tightly closed. Set 
the kettle on the fire and boil the water. The heat vibrates and 
expands the water into steam. The steam quickly fills the 
unoccupied portion of the kettle. The water continues to boil 
and to form more steam. To supply space for the additional 
steam, that already produced is packed more closely together. 
This packed steam presses with great force against the sides 
of the kettle. The pressure becomes greater as more steam 
is generated until finally the metal, unable to longer resist the 
pressure, gives way and flies with terrific force in all directions. 

Steam has power only when under pressure. When there 
is no pressure there is no power. As long as it continues to es- 
cape, thus relieving the pressure, steam is powerless and harm- 
less. The boiler of the engine containing water is made strong 
enough to withstand high pressure without bursting. When 
sufficient steam pressure has been produced the steam is per- 
mitted by the engineer to rush into the cylinder and against the 
piston that pushes the wheels, forcing it back and forth, and 
causing the wheels to turn round. Instead of escaping, or burst- 



78 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

ing the boiler, this steam under pressure is now doing work. 
In a similar way the vibratory energy which constitutes what 
we call feeling is put under pressure in the brain cells. It is 
the pressure and not the mere sensation of feeling in ideas that 
constitutes the power of man. In somewhat the same manner 
as steam under pressure leaves the boiler and passes with 
mighty force into the cylinder and against the piston, so hu- 
man feeling under pressure transmits its energy along the 
nerves leading from the brain to the muscles and using the 
muscles as instruments or tools, does work with them. Feel- 
ing not under pressure has no power. The greater the pres- 
sure the greater the power to propel. Feeling may escape with- 
out doing any work. 

When feeling under pressure is not relieved in a proper way, 
consequences more terrible than the bursting of a kettle may 
ensue in human experience. Many crimes in human life would 
never have been committed had the feeling, before attaining 
irresistible pressure, been given a different outlet. Had man 
understood this law of pressure and its right use the feeling 
would have been utilized for good instead of evil. Feeling 
under pressure has many ways in which to relieve or express 
itself. Thinking of an idea discharges part of its feeling; 
hearing others speak of ideas similar to our own, reading of 
them, talking of our ideas ourselves, doing something to which 
our ideas guide or propel us, seeing the objects which originally 
produced the ideas — these are some of the ways in which 
pressure of feeling in ideas is relieved. 

To show how feeling under pressure operates in every-day 
life we will illustrate the process by an ordinary human ex- 
perience. A young man grew up on a farm. There had been 
produced in his mind many more or less perfect impressions 
of the objects, people and activities of his home and its sur- 



STEAM PRESSURE 79 

roundings. Mental waste and repair were his daily experi- 
ences. During his working hours, he saw, handled, talked 
and reflected upon things about the farm, thus discharging the 
feeling in the ideas which accumulated during sleep. His life 
passed contentedly with no desire for change. The same ideas 
generating the same desires guided and propelled him to the 
same places, caused him to do much the same things from day 
to day, and such new ideas as were formed were acted out 
on the farm. But on a certain day a stranger from a distance 
arrived at the home. He was much in the company of the 
young man, and gave him glowing descriptions of places and 
foreign countries he had visited, causing the boy to construct 
by imagination vivid images of the scenes described, especially 
of a certain large city. It was noticed by the family after the 
stranger had left that the boy talked continually of what the 
man had told him, particularly of the large city. Finally, he 
expressed a desire to visit the city and even importuned his 
parents for permission to leave home. He went to the city 
and for a time was very happy. But in a few days he began 
to think of home and actually to desire to return. This desire 
grew to a homesickness, which was resisted for a while, but 
at last he was compelled to yield. His joy on reaching home 
was the greatest of his life. Why did he leave home? Be- 
cause the pressure in the idea of the city formed by his imagi- 
nation as a result of the stranger's description became so intense 
as to cause a strong desire which compelled him to go to the 
city to relieve the pressure. The pressure in the idea of the 
city formed by imagination was greater than that in his home 
ideas gained by observation. Had this not been the case, he 
would have remained at home. Why did he become homesick? 
When he first reached the city, part of his blood that had 
been flowing to the brain and had formerly been used in re- 



80 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

plenishing the home ideas was now required to replenish the 
imagined ideas of the city, which seeing the city partly dis- 
charged. Another part was used in forming new impressions 
of the things he saw in the city. But not all of his blood was 
so used, and the remainder flowed as formerly into the home 
ideas. As these home ideas were not now used, and their 
feeling therefore not discharged, they gradually became over- 
charged with pressure, causing homesickness. This desire to 
see his home being stronger than the pressure in the ideas of 
the city caused him again to yield to the greater pressure, and 
return home. Had the young man found the city entirely dif- 
ferent from what he had imagined it to be, then the city objects 
not corresponding to what he imagined would not have dis- 
charged his imagined images. Blood would not then have 
been needed for their replenishment, and all that would not 
have been required to form new impressions would have flowed 
at once to the home ideas, causing homesickness more quickly. 

Under what circumstances might he not have become home- 
sick? Any use of his mind that would have employed more 
of his brain blood, thus leaving little to flow into the home 
ideas, would at least have postponed homesickness. If friends 
had taken him on a continuous round of enjoyable entertain- 
ments or had he become more deeply interested in some kind 
of work he would not have become homesick. 

There are at least two other reasons why certain people do 
not experience homesickness. Those having very weak ideas 
are not subject to homesickness. Such people are as well 
contented in one place as in another. If they move about, it 
is due to some external influence not originated in their own 
minds. When away from home, they may return but not 
because of a great desire. On the other hand, persons of 
highly developed ideas causing rapid growth would not be 



STEAM PRESSURE 8 1 

likely to become homesick because their blood would be re- 
quired to form many new impressions. 

Homesickness is merely an intense desire. Desire is a pres- 
sure and a guidance toward the thing desired. It is feeling 
under pressure. If this desire to return home is a home sick- 
ness, why not call desire to see or have anything a mild sick- 
ness for that particular thing? All desires do not, of course, 
become a sickness, but whether the desire is strong or weak 
the principle is the same. Various names are used for con- 
venience in psychology to designate what is really the same 
thing. For example, when we greatly desire something beyond 
present or past attainments we call it ambition, as though 
ambition were something different from desire. An intense 
desire to be President of the United States might as well be 
called president-sickness as ambition so far as the scientific 
fact is concerned. 

An incomplete mind composed largely of substitutional 
knowledge, facts, information, thoughts, possesses little feel- 
ing under pressure. Great pressure of feeling exists only in 
perfected ideas. 



CHAPTER XX. 

WILL. 

When a group of ideas has vibrated, propelled and guided 
a man in a certain work, and when these ideas have exhausted 
their feeling before the undertaking is finished, he need not 
cease working until these particular ideas have been replen- 
ished, but he can borrow feeling from other related ideas and 
thus complete his work. In this way man is said to compel him- 
self to complete a task after he has lost interest in it or to force 
himself to do something even though he may not in the first 
place desire to do it. This is one use of what is called will 
power. A typical experience will throw light on the subject. 
A certain woman organized and became president of a bene- 
ficial society. She was greatly interested in writing a descrip- 
tion for a magazine of the work done by her organization. 
She was also a housekeeper, but rather from necessity than 
preference, as her housekeeping ideas were weak. The ideas 
of her benevolent work were, however, quite highly developed 
and strong. On a certain day her housekeeping ideas were 
brought into direct competition with her benevolent society 
group of ideas. This contest was almost of daily occurrence. 
When the contest was between these two groups only, the 
society group invariably won. When this happened she yielded 
herself to benevolent work, leaving the housekeeping to her 
servants. On this particular occasion, however, the house- 
keeping group won and she was seen working about the house 
and neglecting her magazine article. As she expressed it to 



WILL 83 

a friend, "The servants were away, the housework had to be 
done, and I simply made myself do it." If questioned, she 
might have replied further, "I summoned all my will-power 
and went against what was at first my stronger desire." What 
then is will-power, and where does it originate? Let us ask 
more definitely why she exerted her will, for she must have 
had a special reason for doing so. She replies, "The meals 
are necessary to health and life, and should I not have pre- 
pared them, I and my children would have suffered." "The 
meals are necessary to health and life." This is her reason 
for exerting her will. Is will-power then an energy different 
from what we have discovered in ideas ? Evidently not. This 
statement, "Meals are necessary to health and life," represents 
merely another group of ideas. Think for a moment what 
this group of ideas means to a mother ! It contains a high 
degree of mother feeling under pressure. She associated this 
group of ideas containing powerful emotion with the house- 
keeping group of weak emotional pressure. In doing so she 
reinforced the housekeeping group. When she thought of the 
health and life group its strong feeling was discharged and 
flowed into the housekeeping group with its weak feeling, 
giving the two groups combined preponderance of propelling 
energy over that contained in the society and magazine article 
group. Thus she won the victory for the housekeeping group. 
Will-power is propelling energy obtained by calling into serv- 
ice a group of ideas favorable to and more or less directly 
associated with a line of action, borrowing the energy of this 
group to reinforce the group of ideas directly connected with 
the necessary action but which are too weak of themselves to 
produce the action. Will is therefore not a separate power, but 
like any other mental faculty is merely one of the many func- 
tions of ideas. 



84 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

Were it not for this use of ideas, man would be at the mercy 
of any group of ideas that might happen at the time to pos- 
sess the greatest pressure, regardless of whether it guided him 
to the most advantageous action or not. Individual ideas or 
groups of ideas are selfish, each tending to discharge its own 
energy and guide to its own action. But if ideas of the right 
kind are sufficiently numerous, highly perfected and adequately 
connected, there will result in the mind a wise community of 
interest, an intelligent balance of power producing a mental 
equilibrium that will make for the highest good of the indi- 
vidual and of society. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

TWO KINDS OF FEELINGS. 

Steam can do but one thing, push the engine. Human 
steam, in addition to propelling man, can do many other things. 
The engine has but one kind of steam. Man has two general 
kinds of feeling, pleasant and unpleasant. These may again 
be subdivided into an indefinite number of kinds. In addition 
to propulsion, feeling rewards man with happiness and pun- 
ishes him with unhappiness. These two kinds of feeling may 
be known also as positive and negative. They flow respectively 
from positive and negative ideas. When an idea or group of 
ideas containing positive feeling is discharged we experience 
pleasure or happiness. We have the opposite experience 
if the idea contains negative feeling. Happy and unhappy 
feelings have most important uses in human life. We can 
understand this readily by a study of bodily comfort and pain. 
Physical comfort and physical pain may be called the happiness 
and unhappiness of the body; joy and sorrow may be termed 
the comfort and pain of the mind. What was the design of 
the Creator in making disease and injury to our bodies pain- 
ful? Evidently one purpose was to prevent us from dam- 
aging the body by notifying us of disease or injury that we 
might remove the cause. Physical pain is a warning and a 
punishment. When we suffer pain in the body, if we are 
sufficiently intelligent we at once act on the warning by making 
an effort to remove the cause of the pain. It is the cut in the 
finger and not the pain of the cut that injures the finger. Physi- 



86 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

cal pain is therefore beneficent. Were it not for pain we should 
frequently not know anything to be amiss in our physical 
machinery. Were it not for the punishment inflicted we would 
often knowingly continue to disobey the laws of our bodies. 
The care of the mind is in the same way one of the purposes 
of mental pain or unhappiness, and mental comfort or happi- 
ness. Unhappiness of the mind, like physical pain of the body, 
is a punishment and a warning. Back of mental discomfort 
as back of physical pain there is always a cause which is really 
the harmful thing rather than the discomfort itself. Mental 
happiness and bodily comfort are on the other hand a con- 
firmation of obedience to mental and physical laws. 

The more perfect our positive ideas the greater our pleas- 
ure when they are discharged, and likewise, the more highly 
developed our negative ideas the greater the unhappiness when 
they are discharged. The greater the number of our negative 
ideas the more numerous will be our unhappy experiences, 
and the greater the number of our positive ideas the more 
frequent will be the happy moments. Had we none but nega- 
tive ideas we should always be unhappy. Had we only posi- 
tive ideas we should always be happy, except where 
unhappiness is caused by other people. The cause of pleas- 
ant and unpleasant feelings produces most important effects 
upon the human body. The negative idea or condition in the 
brain which causes unpleasant feeling or unhappiness inter- 
feres with digestion and the positive idea or condition which 
causes pleasant feeling or happiness aids digestion. Assum- 
ing that negative mental conditions injure health and that 
positive conditions benefit it, let us seek for the probable cause 
of the fact and determine approximately how these good and 
bad results are produced. One essential of health is good 
blood. Good blood depends on oxygen. Sufficient oxygen 



TWO KINDS OF FEELINGS 87 

depends upon proper breathing. Positive conditions of mind 
and happiness cause regular, deep and full breathing. We 
take in more oxygen in an hour if we are positive and happy 
than we do if negative. Negative conditions of mind and un- 
happiness produce irregular and short breathing. No special 
mechanical breathing exercises are necessary for the person 
whose ideas are positive and sufficiently developed. So far 
as pure blood is its cause, good health therefore depends on 
perfected ideas and ideals. Positive ideas contain harmonious 
vibration and produce in the mind and body a corresponding 
condition of harmony or absence of friction. The organs of 
the body are then performing their natural functions. The 
regular normal action of the heart and the proper circulation 
of the blood depend on positive conditions of mind, while 
negative conditions cause abnormal action. 

These two opposite states have a direct bearing on the ugli- 
ness and beauty of the human face. The face that is called 
upon constantly or at more or less frequent intervals to 
present to other people the distortion of muscles produced 
by the conditions that in turn cause envy, hate, anger, spite, 
worry, vulgarity, will gradually become chronically ugly. When 
the effect of a transient negative state is added to this chronic 
condition the face is doubly ugly. Positive conditions produce 
a beautiful countenance. There is a permanent and a transient 
expression of the face. The face that expresses only positive 
feelings will in time assume a permanently beautiful expression. 

Negative states cause awkward and irregular motions and 
ungainly positions of the body. Positive conditions produce 
grace of attitude and movement. 

Discordant conditions express themselves not only in the 
face and in the entire body, but also in the tones of the voice. 
There is a permanent and a transient discordant voice produced 



88 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

in the same manner as the permanent and transient facial ex- 
pression. Positive states of mind express themselves in beauti- 
ful tones. 

Other people have much to do with our mental growth. 
They aid or interfere with it. Their silent or expressed respect, 
appreciation and approval are necessary to our growth. Posi- 
tive conditions are not only pleasurable but tend to reproduce 
themselves in others. Our own positive condition aids greatly 
therefore in winning these inspiring influences from other 
people. People are attracted to us because we give them a 
degree of happiness. This in turn reacts upon us and stimu- 
lates our mental growth. Our own painful negative feelings 
tend to cause pain in others. To be negative is to be shunned. 
As a result we lose not only what otherwise would be stimu- 
lating but, being shunned, we become more negative. Be- 
cause of the pleasure experienced we naturally desire to be in 
contact with any person or thing that can discharge our posi- 
tive ideas. Ill health, ugliness, lack of attractiveness, awk- 
wardness, a discordant voice, social ostracism spring from 
the same cause and are closely related. Good health, beauty, 
attractiveness, grace, harmonious tones and social power are 
all closely related and flow from positive ideas. 

The benefits resulting from positive feelings are of the high- 
est order as to quality. Health produced in this way is 
buoyant, vigorous, and permanent; beauty of body resulting 
from beauty of spirit is the highest beauty ; attractiveness that 
is caused by soul qualities is always beneficial and never 
harmful. These are nature-made qualities. Nature is the 
true physician. Harmony of mind is the basis of outward 
grace and purity of tone ; positive ideas and feelings are the 
only legitimate magnetism; vigorous physical and growing 
mental life are the only ideal cosmetics. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

NEGATIVE FEELINGS. 

Negative ideas and their contents, negative, discordant feel- 
ings being disastrous to mind growth, and positive feelings 
being essential not only to mind growth but to health, beauty, 
happiness and influence, we must determine whether it is 
possible to avoid the former and their consequences, and cul- 
tivate only the latter, and, if so, how it may be accomplished. 
Negative mental conditions are due to two causes, undevelop- 
ment and ignorance. One whose mind is vague will carelessly 
permit his negative impressions to be discharged and will 
recklessly yield to the consequent discordant feelings. He 
will be constantly more or less anxious about many things, 
will be easily, though not greatly, worried and cast down, will 
absorb and transmit all kinds of disparaging gossip, and will 
daily read the death columns of the papers, news of disaster 
and descriptions of crime. 

A man with a perfected idea mind will avoid negative ideas 
and feelings, and will seek in all possible ways to construct 
and to discharge only positive impressions. As a result his 
negative impressions gradually weaken from disuse and his 
positive ideas become stronger from constant exercise. He 
does this for the reason that owing to the vividness of his 
ideas and their intensity of feeling the suffering from dis- 
cordant feeling is too great to be unnecessarily borne, and he 
avails himself of every opportunity for the discharge of his 
positive impressions in joyful anticipation of the great pleas- 
ure awaiting him. 



gO POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

The revulsion toward negative experiences and the induce- 
ments of the positive are not sufficiently strong in the case of 
the undeveloped man to drive him from the former and draw 
him to the positive side of life. The victim of his undevelop- 
ment, his only hope of emancipation lies in the power of his 
better educated neighbor who, now wise from his own former 
miseries and present joys, will be emotionally impelled and 
intellectually directed to aid his helpless brother, whose keeper 
he is pleased to be. 

Man is yet in a state of relative undevelopment and ig- 
norance. Civilization is the outgrowth of man's condition, 
and is therefore similarly imperfect. While there is gradual 
advancement, yet new generations inherit the defects of their 
ancestors and absorb to a certain extent the weaknesses of the 
civilization into which they are born. Notwithstanding man's 
mental weakness and lack of scientific knowledge, he attempts 
the solution of the innumerable problems presented by the 
material world. Even in early childhood he asks and attempts 
to answer such questions as "Who made man and who made 
the world?" Later he endeavors to interpret nature and its 
laws in more detail. These interpretations and explanations, 
being necessarily more or less unscientific and many of them 
intensely negative, are handed down in literature, art, music, 
history, tradition, from one generation to another. The pres- 
ent generation is in possession of this mass of negative ideas. 
Shall we let these ideas work out their deadly results in us 
as they did in our ancestors, and again pass them on to the 
next generation, or shall we endeavor to discover a remedy 
for them and their destructive influences? 

A superficial and even superstitious interpretation of many 
of the forces of nature, such as earthquakes, lightning, storms, 
have produced many negative impressions on the human mind. 



NEGATIVE FEELINGS 9 1 

It has been assumed that these forces are negative because 
they sometimes destroy human life and when we fix our at- 
tention on this fact alone such an inference is natural. But 
there is another point of view which may lead to a different 
conclusion. We assume that human development is the funda- 
mental purpose of that part of the universe with which we are 
in contact. Man is at school on earth. One of the means of 
developing his mind is the exercise it receives in attempting to 
understand, utilize and control the forces of nature. His 
growth by this agency is very great. While he reached many 
negative conclusions his mind grew as a result of the exercise. 
Before its nature was understood steam was no doubt con- 
sidered a dangerous nuisance. But its former uncontrolled, 
undirected destructiveness is now changed into constructive 
achievement and to a positive idea. Wind was once largely 
considered a negative force; now it pushes ships and does 
much other important work. Today the air is navigated. 
It has already lost much of its negative character. The oceans 
were formerly negative. Because of man's inventive power 
they are now vast avenues of commerce and travel. Thunder 
and lightning are the terror of many people. But think of 
what electricity is doing today. If it destroys life occasion- 
ally, may not this be due to man's ignorance or carelessness? 
May he not finally discover a means by which the dangers of 
lightning will be avoided? Earthquakes are so far somewhat 
mysterious and are viewed almost entirely negatively, but the 
time and place of their occurrence may some day be foretold 
and their destructiveness to life avoided. 

Disease has been a vast source of negative thinking. Un- 
der present conditions in the plan of God, disease is a natural 
but not a necessary consequence. It will not always be prevalent. 
Had man and everything else been created perfect there would, 



92 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

of course, be no disease. Man was created on the principle of 
organic undevelopment that he might have the joy and bene- 
fit of growth and discovery. Disease is the result of violated 
law. In overcoming disease by its prevention or cure, man is 
becoming more highly developed. Sickness, pain, sorrow, re- 
gret, remorse, are nature's penalty for violated law, but the 
design of the penalty is to compel man to think and. to use 
and enlarge the powers of his mind. Thinking is growing. 
This stimulation of mind gives these inflictions not a negative 
but a positive character. We conclude from these and other 
reasons that there is no negative fact in nature that will not 
disappear through perfected ideas and human growth. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
WORDS. 

The progress of civilization has been immeasurably aided 
by the transmission and preservation of knowledge by means 
of printed language. Indirectly man has benefited personally. 
But were we to compare the all-round mental power of the 
finest scholars of today with that of the highest type of learned 
men preceding at any time the era of printed books, we should 
not discover in the former that degree of superiority which 
the advantage of books might have led us to expect. It can 
be readily shown that many scholars while possessing the bene- 
fits of mere knowledge are not strong mentally. They do not 
possess complete minds. Books and the invention of printing 
have injected a new problem into education, the growth of 
mind by means of language. Much of our knowledge comes 
to us by means of books. But the value of book knowledge 
as a means of mind growth depends entirely on the quality or 
degree of perfection of the ideas composing the knozvledgc, 
and this in turn is determined by the reader's previous develop- 
ment and by the manner in which he studies books. We must 
therefore discover the laws and conditions of scientific book 
study. 

How does book language operate upon association and 
imagination in producing ideals and ideas? We have seen 
how our minds gain ideas when we look at flowers or land- 
scapes. How do they act in gaining ideas when we merely 
read about flowers or landscapes? Books are composed of 



94 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

words and sentences. We must first take up the problem of 
words. I look at a rose on the bush in front of me as I write. 
We call this rose an object. I close my eyes and see in my 
mind, not the rose, but a mental image of the rose. I look 
at the tablet on which I am writing and see four written letters, 
r-o-s-e. I open a dictionary and I find there four printed 
letters, r-o-s-e. Neither these lead pencil marks nor those 
made by type are the same thing that I see in my mind. I 
speak the word, "rose," and you hear it. We call this the 
spoken word rose. So we have the rose itself hanging on the 
bush ; the impression of the rose in the mind ; and lastly we 
have the three kinds of words, spoken, written and printed. 
When I close my eyes I see not only a mental rose, but I see 
pictures also of the penciled word and of the printed word 
and I hear in my mind the spoken word rose. Hence we have 
three kinds of mental words. Having before me on the bush 
the rose ; in my mind, the idea of the rose ; and these two gen- 
eral kinds of words, mental and material, let us ask what are 
the relations between these, what Is their use and how do they 
act upon one another ? The rose itself is on the bush and not 
in the tablet. The mental image of the rose is in my mind and 
not in the tablet. The sound word rose is produced by vibra- 
tion in the air and the sound itself is in the brain only. As 
seeing or hearing the word rose can cause me to think of my 
idea of the rose and as thinking of any idea partly discharges 
it, it follows that words discharge feeling under pressure in 
ideas. In speaking or writing, or in listening to others speak or 
write, the words perform their work unconsciously, the law be- 
ing that we consciously think of the more interesting impres- 
sion; the idea usually being more interesting than the words 
associated with it, we think of the idea and not of the word. 
The idea unfortunately may be so vague as to be less tangible 



words 95 

than the word. In such a case the attention tends to pass from 
the idea to the word. 

When we see a box with a card tacked upon it and the word 
"flowers" printed on the card, we may speak of the word as the 
label of what is in the box. Such words as tree, rose, fire, 
hope, are names or labels of certain things. External labels, 
words, signs, names, symbols, are necessary that people may 
communicate in speech with one another. But they are only 
media of exchange. That you may understand what I mean 
when I speak the word "rose" several things are necessary. 
Each of us must possess an idea of a rose, a mental spoken 
word rose, and a certain wave motion of the air must cor- 
respond to our mental word rose in order to vibrate it and thus 
cause us to think of our idea of a rose. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

SENTENCES. 

If single words merely cause us to think of and discharge 
ideas already in the mind, what do groups of words, such as 
phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs accomplish? Sen- 
tences being composed of single words, the single words do 
in the sentence what they do separately, make us think of and 
discharge ideas. But as parts of a sentence they do something 
in addition. What is accomplished by words and sentences 
takes place after the words reach the mind. It follows that a 
sentence cannot take any of the elements, color, sound, etc., 
that are now outside of the mind and put them inside of the 
mind. Whatever it accomplishes is done with what is already 
in the mind. There are only three general effects that can be 
produced with what is in the mind. Ideas can be discharged, 
connected by ordinary association, and compounded by imag- 
ination. Single words discharge ideas, and sentences associate 
and compound them. By association sentences reveal new rela- 
tions between ideas and cause us to have new thoughts and 
they form new compounds by imagination. To illustrate : 
You procure from a doctor a prescription and take it to a drug 
store. The druggist reads the words of the prescription and 
in a few minutes hands you a bottle of medicine. The mind 
is the drug store. The ideas already in the mind are the drugs 
in the jars. Sentences are the prescriptions. As the prescrip- 
tion directed the druggist in putting together drugs already in 
his store, sentences guide the mind in putting together certain 



SENTENCES 97 

ideas already in the mind. We obtain medicine not from a 
prescription, but by means of a prescription. We obtain 
thought not from a sentence, but by means of a sentence. 
There are no drugs nor medicine in a prescription. 
There are no ideas, thoughts nor feelings in a sentence. A 
sentence is merely a prescription, a direction for thought, 
truth, idea, associations, images, feelings. There is no truth, 
knowledge, facts in a sentence. Truth, facts, knowledge, can 
exist only in a mind. Before a prescription can be of any 
use, the drugs called for must be in the store. Before a sen- 
tence can be of any value, the ideas to be associated must be 
in the mind. If the druggist does not have a certain drug de- 
manded by the prescription he can do one of two things, ob- 
tain it from a wholesale house, or produce the desired drug 
by compounding two or more of which he has in stock. When 
the mind of a reader does not possess a certain idea called 
for by a word or sentence, one of two things should be done. 
He should go to the wholesale house, the universe, and obtain 
the needed idea by observation ; or he should associate or com- 
pound the proper ideas already in his mind and thus produce 
the one required. If the thought is quite unimportant, he may 
employ substitutional thinking. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

BOOKS. 

What has been stated as to the function of sentences is 
equally true of books. The fundamental law of observation is 
a kind of mental photography, and, in part, association of ideas ; 
of literature, it is entirely a matter of association and imagina- 
tion. Books are dependent on observation for the supply of 
a certain number of perfected ideas. Had observation done 
nothing for the mind books could do nothing. Books possess 
two great advantages, they preserve and distribute language, 
the symbols of knowledge. As a means of mental growth 
through the distribution of the prescriptions of knowledge, 
books, magazines, newspapers, produce breadth or scope of 
mind growth. Were it not for the unscientific use of books, 
there would be less to record against them from the point of 
view of mental development. When sentences express what is 
true and morally right, and are the means of forming vital 
relations between ideas or higher relations between relations 
nothing can be recorded against books. Notwithstanding their 
value and necessity, the disadvantage of books to mind growth 
because of their unscientific use has been very great. If a 
man's ideas are sufficiently perfect to be acted upon by books, 
their use as a means of mind growth will be scientific and ad- 
vantageous, but if not then bad effects ensue. To understand 
the reason for this, it must be remembered that ideas grow only 
by use. To be used they must be discharged. That the dis- 
charge may be sufficiently complete to give adequate exercise 



books 99 

and growth, the attention must be focused upon the ideas. The 
first bad effect of a wrong use of books consists in shifting the 
attention of the reader from his ideas and their relations and 
centering it on words. If the study of books under this condi- 
tion, in which the attention wanders over a barren waste of 
words, is continued, its return to ideas will be finally almost 
impossible. There will then have resulted one of the most 
disastrous of mental disorders, the disease of symbolism which 
gradually arrests mental growth. 

Another tendency arises in which books express relations 
which are probably rightly formed in the reader's mind to be- 
gin with, but later the book expresses relations not directly 
between impressions, but relations between relations, causing 
the relational vibration to become very weak. The ideas may 
be quite perfect, but may not be sufficiently so to supply vibra- 
tion for relations so remote. There is consequently produced 
in the mind mere intangible abstractions, substitutional con- 
ceptions, incapable of propelling and guiding to action. The 
wrong use of books has aided in producing a false conception 
of education. According to one among many aspects of this 
conception the more a man knows, regardless of the degree 
of perfection of his ideas, the better. This is the old unscien- 
tific quantitative notion in contrast with the modern scientific, 
qualitative or intensive principle of education. By the quan- 
titative principle of teaching and study the effort is made to 
strengthen human weakness by an unlimited increase of mere 
information regardless of the perfection of the ideas of which 
the information is composed. "Knowledge is power" is the 
motto. But the motto requires modification. It must include 
quality or perfection of ideas. It should read "Knowledge 
consisting of association and compounding of perfected ideas 
is power." This quantitative standard which has prevailed 



100 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

for centuries, though now slowly losing its influence, led also 
to many wrong conclusions in ethics, religion, art, literature, 
criticism. The remedy for the wrong use of books is perfected 
ideas. The student in using books must know when his ideas 
are sufficiently perfected to be acted upon advantageously by 
book language. The ideas must be ready for the book, the book 
must be the right one for the ideas it is to operate upon. There 
are laws to guide us in the right use of books. Ideas to be 
associated by book knowledge must be perfected and contain 
a high degree of feeling under pressure. This will create a 
desire for their discharge, and hence a desire for a certain book. 
The book that discharges these ideas will of course afford the 
reader intense pleasure. One may not at first have any desire 
for a certain line of thought, but a book may be so written as to 
create in its earlier pages a desire for what is presented in its 
later chapters. If it does this, it is a valuable book to read. 
A desire to read a particular book may be created by what 
others say of it, and when it is read no pleasure may be experi- 
enced, either because the reader did not possess the necessary 
ideas or the book was not so written as to enable him to asso- 
ciate or compound the ideas. Under these circumstances the 
book should not be read. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

SELF-EXPRESSION. 

Physical muscles, mental faculties, ideas, grow stronger and 
become more perfect by right use. In natural, all-round self- 
expression in its various forms all human powers are used 
in an ideal way, and as a result become highly developed. The 
man who educates himself according to the laws of the New 
Education will finally settle upon a vocation in which he will 
experience his fullest self-expression. But no single line of 
work is as large as the mind should be. In addition to his regu- 
lar work a man should have many other ways in which he can 
and does express himself. The man who can express himself 
in a large number of avocations will be the greatest when he 
expresses himself in his vocation. From the point of view 
of self-growth the question arises as to which of the follow- 
ing plans is the wiser, to earn one's living in a business or pro- 
fession in which the heart life finds full expression and have 
in addition certain avocations for recreation and for the pur- 
pose of growing that part of the mind not exercised in the 
vocation; or on the other hand to express one's heart life in 
an avocation and to earn one's livelihood in some work suffi- 
ciently remunerative financially, but not one to command his 
deeper soul life? The danger of the former is narrowness, 
and of the latter, indifferent success and more or less unhap- 
piness. Assuming that a man has for his central purpose 
his own growth, and that he has sufficient liberty in the con- 
duct of his business or work to exercise his fullest originality, 
the former is the better course to adopt. 



102 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

Man may express himself in many ways. As a sympathetic 
listener he gives many ideas exercise that would otherwise only 
occasionally be aroused from slumber. There are many situa- 
tions in which expression in various forms of speech is the 
wise course to adopt. Silence is not always golden. There 
are times when it is the highest privilege of a man to express 
himself in public, in art, writing, music, public speaking, and 
to shrink from it permanently is to deprive himself of growth. 
Many causes prevent self-expression. One of these is a fail- 
ure to appreciate its effect on personal growth. The primary 
cause is, of course, weakness of ideas which prevent that sense 
of self-confident security that all crave during the process 
of expression. Since the inspiration to express one's self can- 
not come from weak ideas we should reinforce these ideas in 
all possible ways, especially by associating with them all ad- 
vantages of self-expression, that is, we should perfect our ideal 
of self-expression. Nothing can compensate for the lost op- 
portunity of expression. Even should we fail outwardly, we 
never fail inwardly as mind growth always results from the 
effort, and a degree of outward success will eventually come 
through the increased power resulting from the exercise. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

A PERFECTED IDEA MAN. 

What kind of a human being in general will a man inevitably 
become who possesses a complete synthetic mind? We have 
seen that many people are the products of undeveloped ideas 
and substitutional knowledge, and hence have incomplete, un- 
developed minds. The question before us is what kind of men 
and women would they have become had they possessed com- 
plete, developed minds. The most important quality of per- 
fected ideas and of the complete mind is growth. The more 
highly perfected the ideas, the more rapid the growth and the 
longer it will continue. The new man will therefore be a grow- 
ing man blessed with the host of advantages that growth pro- 
duces. The discharge of perfected positive ideas gives great 
pleasure. Seeing that the happiness highest in degree and 
quality as well as all other benefits depend on growth, he will 
naturally become interested in his growth, and will finally 
make it the central purpose of his life. The growing mind 
yields the fruit of original ideas. This is the most important 
result of growth. Every apple is original with the tree that 
grew it. If a tree bore a kind of fruit that never existed be- 
fore, the term original would properly be applied also to this 
fruit. A man with a growing mind may produce many ideas 
that are original in the first sense, though not necessarily in 
the second. In addition to the ordinary uses of knowledge, 
facts are formed in the mind of a properly educated man that 
they may multiply and produce new facts, new to him, and 



104 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

some of them perhaps new to the world. All work to be suc- 
cessful requires a certain degree of originality. 

By constant pressure in his ideas such a man is impelled 
to the front and kept abreast or ahead of his time. His mind 
gives him the quality of courageous initiative, causing him to 
champion new ideas with confidence and fearlessly to apply 
them. By the discharge and replenishment of ideas in his 
work he will receive constant, intelligent, moral, spiritual and 
bodily exercise, giving him the benefits of such exercise, and 
therefore increasing his desire for all kinds of mental and phys- 
ical nourishment. Growth in a certain direction increases de- 
sire for nourishment in the same direction. Growth produces 
open-mindedness or eagerness to accept truth from whatever 
source it may come. Broad mindedness arises from the same 
condition. The complexity of his perfected ideas enables 
him to see all around a subject. New ideas give the narrow 
man emotional pain unless they happen to harmonize with his 
previous limited knowledge. He therefore shuns information. 
The growing mind forms images of new things to be accom- 
plished, and perfects these to the point of great pressure and 
desire for their realization. This is ambition. All growing 
people are ambitious. 

As already shown, positive ideas, harmonious feelings and 
the general positive life will distinguish the man for beauty of 
expression, in body, voice and language, for grace of manner 
and action, and for power to attract and influence people. His 
entire body being used by his mind he will possess what might 
be termed a mind saturized body, a psychalized, spiritualized, 
voice, face and body. All powers of such a man work har- 
moniously. He is able to focus the energy of his entire being 
upon the accomplishment of any undertaking. He has wide 
range of adaptability; is synthetic and analytic, can superin- 



A PERFECTED IDEA MAN IO5 

tend or execute, command or obey. His mind is fully occu- 
pied and entertained by its own operations, and his body is 
busily employed responding to the propulsions and directions 
of his mind. He is therefore a genuine, natural man. As a 
result of highly complex ideas, he becomes a man of distinctive 
individuality. Individuality copyrights his work enabling him 
to place on the market something different from that of other 
men. He does not improperly think of himself because his 
attention is irresistibly drawn to his ideas by their attractive 
power. His thought, feeling and expression are therefore 
never paralized by self-consciousness. Possessing in himself 
the only power by which his desires and ambitions can be 
gratified, and proving this by daily results he becomes self- 
confident and self-reliant. His primary interests centre in 
truth, ideas. He is a man of ideas rather than of mere facts 
— his facts being organic parts of ideas. Within a limited area 
he knows the truth and to this extent is a free man. 

Ability to hold before the mind for an indefinite length of 
time a luminous vision of the earth or any part of it, or to 
live in any positive idea or ideal is one of the many mani- 
festations of a poetic mind. In this state of mind nothing is 
commonplace and all things become idealized. Such a man 
sees the universe as it is, interesting, fascinating, sublime. 

Personality includes all mental powers with all of their 
activities ; knowledge with all of its phases ; character with all 
of its factors. True education, right study, and all scientific 
human activity and work increase personality and character. 
A man so educated will have no stagnant spots in his mind, 
and all parts of his nature will contribute to the fulfillment 
of his life's purposes. He will be a man of marked personality. 
Knowing that all things of real and permanent value are parts 
of his own nature, that all which makes for happiness is under 



I06 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

his control, for these and many other reasons he will be a man 
of contentment. Possessing an all-round developed mind and 
character, he is a balanced man. Whether in action or in in- 
action, whether his mind is moving along the lines of ordinary 
work or performing its part in some great life crisis, it moves 
in equilibrium. He is a man of repose. As his mind will 
eventually become more highly organized than the physical 
world he will discover its superiority over external nature and 
all material things. He will derive greater pleasure from his 
ideal of a landscape than from material plains and forests, and 
his growing mind will afford him higher satisfaction than his 
growing crops or his expanding business. He stands among 
the phenomena of nature the synthesis of all natural king- 
doms, the proprietor of a wonderful estate, the perfected 
flower of evolution, the climax of creative power. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 
THE NEW WORK. 

The new man will produce a grade of work, original, com- 
plete in details and artistic. It will be animated by a spirit 
from which all drudgery is eliminated. The same conditions 
of mind that in his childhood made his play what it was — the 
joy of his life, the source of health, beauty, mind growth now 
produces his productive play work. His work is born of his 
own nature, and therefore fits him. It is his mental, moral 
and physical culture. He grows by his work, his work grad- 
ually becoming a fine art improves as a result of his growth. 
Any kind of work including the simplest form of manual labor 
may be performed mechanically or spontaneously. The prop- 
erly educated man labors daily, but he is not an ordinary day 
laborer. It is not the work in itself that lowers or elevates 
the man, but the condition of mind in which the work is per- 
formed that determines the grade of work. The idea man 
does not descend to his work on a material basis, but raises 
it to himself on his mental plane. An undeveloped man in a 
pulpit would make preaching drudgery, a new man in a quarry 
would transform his trade into a calling. In thus idealizing 
manual labor, proving it an educational necessity, and one of 
the highest earthly blessings, man is accomplishing an im- 
portant result for the human race. 

At the present time many of the greatest minds of the world 
move toward commercial life because of its financial rewards. 



108 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

But business is larger than the men, generally speaking, who 
enter it. The average business man is a victim gradually 
crushed by forces that were designed for his personal ele- 
vation. This result is due not to business itself, but to the 
business man's mental condition. The manufacturer, for ex- 
ample, to meet this condition, and to be successful in the fullest 
sense, must possess, among other attainments, a vivid syn- 
thetic vision not only of all phases and of all details of his 
factory and of his business with its ramifications, but also an 
equally complete conception of the country in which the goods 
are to be used, of its people, their habits, desires, needs and 
tastes. This vision will enable him to avoid errors of judg- 
ment, to seize opportunities, and will give him the power of 
business prophecy. Business covering the earth, handling all 
commodities in this most complex period of the world's his- 
tory, with its social, moral, scientific, psychologic and philo- 
sophic aspects, when conducted by men whose minds are 
rightly prepared, and who have taken up proper avocations, 
becomes one of the most valuable means of human growth. 

The new teaching is both cause and effect of the new edu- 
cation. A full orbed human being is the parent of the new 
teaching. It requires a teacher with a complete mind to be 
human in the school room. Undeveloped teachers, in defeat, 
shield themselves behind professional conventionality, arbi- 
trary discipline, and mere external standards of instruction. 
The true teacher is the embodiment and evangel of the New 
Knowledge. The lessons he assigns are not harmful tasks, 
to be merely substitutional^ memorized without adequate 
assimilation, but the facts he dispenses have healing in their 
wings and carry messages of joy and power. 

The work of the novelist is in a sense creative. To produce 
a successful story his knowledge of plot, places, characters 



THE NEW WORK IO9 

and actions dare not be merely substitutional. Did substitu- 
tional thinking serve the purpose, there would be many suc- 
cessful books where there is one today. In most cases this is 
the sole fundamental cause of failure. While the writer may 
begin with substitutional thinking, he must not so continue. 
The abstract must be concreted, imagined, pictured in minute 
detail so vividly that if by a magic process the story thus pic- 
tured should suddenly become a material reality somewhere 
on the earth just as it exists in the author's mind with no 
detail added nor omitted, and if we should travel over these 
places, see all of the objects and live with the people, and if 
in doing this we should never suspect that they were the origi- 
nal creation of a human mind, then the story in the author's 
mind would be sufficiently complete for the purpose of success- 
ful authorship. The problem of effective, artistic writing is 
solved by perfected ideas and the complete mind. The finest 
writers will, of course, always be born with great talent, but 
ideal writing may also be attained by development. The core 
of effective writing lies below the usual external instruction. 
It is hidden in ideas. We do not express ideas, they are living 
forces that with our permission express themselves. We shall 
have the greatest literature only when born writers receive the 
benefits of a college training embodying the New Education. 
Many musicians have visions of a New Music. The soul 
of music is the harmonious vibration of feeling resulting from 
the discharge of musical ideas. When this discharge is of the 
right quality and sufficiently intense as a result of perfected 
ideas and expresses itself in harmonious musical sounds, vocal 
or instrumental, we have an example of the New Music. 
Musicians know that it is possible to sing or to play and pro- 
duce mere harmonious sounds that are not at all preceded nor 
accompanied by this soul element of music. The problem is 



IIO POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

how to make this mental vibration, this soul element, of ade- 
quate strength and of the right quality. The great musician 
is more than a skillful performer. In addition to his native 
musical ability, his technical knowledge and training, he must 
have the power of vivid, concrete conception equal to that of 
the great author. This condition is never realized except in 
the idea mind. 

The individual with such a mind who adopts the stage as 
a profession is not an actor in the ordinary sense. The un- 
developed actor is but a mechanical imitator. The ideal actor 
does not superficially imitate, he is the character; he does 
not act, he lives on the stage. To achieve this he must 
possess a vivid conception of the characters of the play, of 
their location, environment, and successive mental conditions 
during the progress of the performance. When this condition 
of mind is attained by actors generally, the theatre will rank 
among the most effective of educational forces. 

The born orator is an individual who inherits to an extraor- 
dinary degree the elements necessary for the growth of per- 
fected ideas. To grow such a mind to the degree of power 
necessary for effective speech and oratory, the usual life in- 
fluences and educational processes are sufficient. The public 
speaker, lecturer, orator, like the author, musician, actor, must 
have not only a thought mind, but an idea mind also. What 
he expresses must be as actual to his imagination and feelings 
as life and the outside world should be to the senses. While a 
few people possess this to a high degree by inheritance, many 
may attain it by scientific development. And no matter how 
great the original talent of a man, he too may vastly increase 
his talent by lines of development adapted to his case. Per- 
fected ideas and the complete developed mind solve the problem 
of the attainment, study and teaching of oratory. 



THE NEW WORK III 

What has been stated as to the relation of perfected ideas, 
of the concrete, organic conception of knowledge, and of 
the synthetic idea mind, to manual labor, business, teaching, 
the drama, authorship, music, oratory, applies equally to art, 
architecture, and to all trades and professions. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 
SOME EDUCATIONAL INFERENCES. 
To what extent can the results of perfected ideas be realized 
within a single lifetime? Would children whose entire educa- 
tion had been conducted on the idea basis reap marked benefits 
during their own lives or must several generations be so de- 
veloped before great results will appear? Would a person of 
twenty years of age, having studied and been taught substitu- 
tionally up to college graduation who should afterwards pur- 
sue a course of instruction in one or more branches of study 
on the mind growth principle, be able to overcome the effects 
of previous study and teaching and so to reform his mind as 
to attain in early life advantages sufficient to warrant such a 
special course? Would those in middle life similarly situated 
be repaid ? It is true that many generations must be scientific- 
ally educated and heredity contribute its aid before the highest 
growth will be reached. Notwithstanding this fact, we can give 
a general affirmative reply to the foregoing questions. It seems 
almost incredible that those in middle life can be sufficiently 
benefited to make the effort of special study worth while, but 
it has b€ ..n proven that men and women past fifty will be amply 
rewarded. The matter of age itself is not the determining 
factor as to how much can be done for a particular mind by 
scientific development. Certain minds are more susceptible of 
improvement at fifty or sixty years than others at thirty. It 
is immaterial what the age if the mind is yet in a condition to 
experience the difference between substitutional and concrete 



SOME EDUCATIONAL INFERENCES II3 

knowledge, is unprejudiced, open to new ideas, and if the in- 
dividual desires to improve to the extent that he will 
thoroughly pursue the necessary training. 

Is this education needed by everyone and is it adapted to all 
people? It is needed universally and applies to all people. 
It is not a mechanical, man made process, it is nature's educa- 
tion. It is adapted to all branches of study. There are certain 
subjects, such as higher mathematics, which deal largely with 
abstract relations and reasoning, for which on first thought a 
substitutional schooling would seem to be the right preparation, 
but such is not the case. The more highly perfected the ideas 
of the prospective mathematician to begin with, the more useful 
will he be to the world. This fortunate universal adaptability 
of idea education to any age from childhood onward, to all 
mental conditions, to all vocations, and to all branches of study, 
is further emphasized in the fact that those already in business 
or professional life in undertaking special development, do 
not find it necessary to pursue new lines of thought in which 
they are not interested, but in all cases the principles are appli- 
cable to those impressions with which the individuals are al- 
ready familiar and which are in daily practical use. 

In the school-room application of the idea principle success 
largely depends, as already stated, on the motives of teacher 
and pupil, their motives to be determined not by their theories, 
but by the direct object, spirit, and nature of the actual work 
done. Mere knowledge is not co-extensive with the scope of a 
developed mind. Such a mind possesses much that knowledge 
did not give. The growing mind cannot be confined within 
the circumference of present or future knowledge, but must 
be permitted to extend beyond this with unrestrained freedom. 

In what respect does school work on the idea principle dif- 
fer from that conducted substitutional^ ? It is impossible here 



114 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

to give a detailed reply to this question. It is well-known 
how the average student at present prepares a lesson substitu- 
tionary, say in history. The question is how would he prepare 
it concretely? After studying, reciting, passing examinations 
and graduating, what, as a result of ordinary study, is his 
mental condition as far as his history facts are concerned? 
Are these facts as vivid, as tangible as material reality? If 
so his interest in them will be intense. They will always be 
as real to him as the memories of his own home. They will 
rapidly grow and produce other conceptions and inspirations. 
They will daily perform their functions in his heart experi- 
ences and in his work. Every student knows, however, that 
these are not the usual results of historical study. The failure 
is due to substitutional education. As a remedy the teacher 
must not only assign the lesson. He must instruct the student 
how concretely to prepare it. He must do more than this. He 
must guide the student in developing within himself the power 
so to prepare the lesson. The preparation will consist in per- 
fecting the important ideas of the lesson, and not merely in 
consciously memorizing the substitutional facts. He will pre- 
pare the lesson not with part of his mind, but with his com- 
plete mind. Perfecting the ideas involves imagination, concrete 
association of ideas, original concrete thinking, accumulation 
of feeling under pressure and judgment. A lesson thus studied 
will not be forgotten. Memory is provided for in perfected 
ideas. It can readily be understood what the teacher's prep- 
aration for such a task must be. He himself must have 
been educated on the principles he would have his students 
apply. To teach others how to grow ideas he must know ex- 
perimentally how ideas grow. To direct them in growing their 
ideas he must have grown his own. Like the rose grower 
fully knowing the laws and conditions of plant life, so as a 



SOME EDUCATIONAL INFERENCES I I 5 

teacher, as an idea grower, he must understand the laws of idea 
culture. We have seen how the various parts of an idea flow 
into the mind, that sound and color do not rise primarily from 
human consciousness, and are not absorbed from printed 
words, but have their origin primarily in the world outside of 
the mind. We know that in view of this fact the very young 
child to gain an impression of a sound must hear it, of an 
odor he must smell it, and to receive perfected impressions of 
sound and odor he must hear and smell many of them many 
times. The child may gain a partial impression of heat by 
placing his hand or face near a hot object, but this impression 
will be broadened and intensified when his entire body is 
brought in contact with heat. This principle by which the 
whole body is employed in absorbing impressions is illustrated 
in the case of other elements. Take motion as an example: 
A child never having observed an automobile or other object 
moving rapidly has its first experience, we will suppose, when 
it sees a machine dash swiftly along the road. It now has an 
impression of this particular motion. But let it ride in an 
automobile, later on learn to run one, and gain definite im- 
pressions of the motions of all of its parts. Let it in a similar 
manner bring its entire body many times and in many different 
ways in contact with the motions of hundreds of all kinds of 
objects, then its impression of motion as one of the elements 
of a perfected idea is ready to meet the demands of idea edu- 
cation. Certain phases of ideas and certain parts of the brain 
and mind are developed on the idea basis to the extent to which 
the entire body is employed in forming impressions. A mind 
so developed has the power to study history or any other sub- 
ject from books on the idea basis. Education properly con- 
ducted in a school-room with books and teachers plays an 
essential part in the mind development process. Scientific book 



Il6 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

study does not constitute a barrier between the growing mind 
and its primary source of nourishment and exercise, the uni- 
verse, but in addition to its necessary mental assistance in 
associational, imaginative, and logical work it guides and stimu- 
lates the mind to a closer and more intelligent contact with 
material things. What the child is to do therefore in school 
and out of it consists in those mental and physical activities 
essential to the growth of its mind and the development and 
training of its body in all possible directions during each day. 
The inadequacy of substitutional education from this point of 
view lies in the fact that it calls into play but a small fraction 
of the mind, and hence of the body during their successive 
stages of growth, producing only partial minds, untrained and 
relatively weak bodies, limited men and women, and a re- 
stricted civilization. In a substitutional school both teachers 
and pupils live circumscribed lives, lives mentally painful, un- 
natural and unhuman. Students and teachers love school when 
the experience it affords is as broad or broader than that to 
which they have been accustomed. Neither is it sufficient to 
say that the work of an idea school would correspond to life, 
unless we mean life as it should be rather than as it is. Life 
as it should be is as much broader than life as it is, as life as 
it is extends beyond the area of substitutional thinking. Only 
ideal life is co-extensive with what the mind should be. Mental 
and physical restriction as opposed to the enfranchisement, 
expansion, and all-round development of the mind frequently 
begins in the home where the "don't habit" destroys the in- 
telligent freedom of positive action. That primitive and 
largely false conception of an education which consists merely 
in learning what is supposed to be in books, what teachers 
know, in receiving diplomas, that conceives life to be something 
entirely different from education, greatly interferes with the 



SOME EDUCATIONAL INFERENCES WJ 

results which all intelligent teachers are endeavoring to pro- 
duce. 

Because of lack of time, too many students, and for other 
good reasons, the school and college should not be expected 
to include the whole of a student's education, not even during 
the years of his attendance at school. The mind development 
teacher, to produce the highest results must have the general 
direction of the student's daily life outside of the school as 
well as in it. The teacher who will make scientifically and 
impressively clear to parents that the home and its surround- 
ings and everything done by children or young men and women 
may be made most valuable manual training aids to education, 
and that the more things children learn properly to do, the 
better minds they will have and the more successful and happy 
they will be, will perform a great service to parents, to children, 
to society and to the State. If he will go further and teach 
parents how to idealize and glorify the tasks of daily life, how 
to make work attractive and educational, he will have greatly 
extended the boundaries of his school and its mind growth 
results and will deserve a reward beyond the ability of any 
to bestow. 

The Kindergarten, Manual Training, Trade, Vocational, 
Technical Schools, Agricultural Colleges, and all education 
institutions where the body is more or less employed in gain- 
ing impressions, and hence an education, all are in harmony 
with the idea principle as far as they go. Classical courses 
also occupy a legitimate position, and have always to a limited 
extent met the requirements of true education. Where such 
courses miss the point of the mind development principle, the 
failure is due not only to substitutional instruction in college, 
but also to substitutional college preparation. When the classic- 
al and manual training processes fully conform to the idea 



Il8 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

principle something will remain of the former, and much will 
have been added to manual training. Both will have undergone 
a fundamental readjustment in their underlying purposes. 
Classical teaching, while theoretically aiming at human culture, 
practically tends toward the acquisition of knowledge and other 
motives. Manual training and technical schools make a similar 
claim to character development, yet they actually move in the 
main toward mechanical skill and the accumulation of facts. 
Incidentally, considerable mind growth results in both cases. 
When motives and methods are recast and new principles 
applied the growth of mind will be correspondingly greater. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

A PROPHECY. 

From scientific education not only a new humanity and a 
new work, but a human life in many respects new will gradu- 
ally appear. Its central fact will be a general readjustment 
brought about by the adoption of human growth as its pri- 
mary aim. This aim will be the starting point of thought, 
the goal of action. Many material affairs now considered 
of primary value will in consequence occupy a relatively minor 
position, resulting in a more refined, more permanent material 
progress. Facts of a mental, esthetic and spiritual character 
now in the background will assume their true position. In 
estimating people the test will consist in discovering not how 
much they own, know, or have done, but how much they are 
growing. Knowledge and achievement will not cling to man ex- 
ternally, like barnacles to a ship, disfiguring him and retarding 
his progress, but they will be assimilated and subordinated, 
and will be an organic part of his personality and character. 
The new life will prove that man may be successful financially, 
in scholarship, or in notable deeds, and yet every penny, fact 
or deed be represented in mental growth. The man will be 
larger than his achievements. His taste in Art will be known 
primarily not by the statuary and paintings in his home, but 
by the Art products adorning the gallery of his mind. The 
estimation of his musical culture will rest not upon the operas 
patronized, but upon the soul symphonies in his mental con- 
cert halls and by the impulses these stimulate to activity. 



120 POWER THROUGH PERFECTED IDEAS 

From the new people and a new personal life there will arise 
a new age in which all things will be established on a new 
scientific basis. Being the direct efflux of spontaneous, un- 
perverted mind it will be a psychological age. All phenomena 
will be interpreted from the standpoint of mind. The inhabit- 
able globe will become a vast university of instruction and 
human development, with the vocations, avocations, trades 
and professions as the various departments. Schools and 
colleges will be broader and deeper extensions of the student's 
previous life. And as the same principles of growth will pre- 
vail in school and in life, in graduating and passing to the 
larger life University there will be no radical transition. Like 
the perfected mind from which they spring, all elements of 
civilization will be unified, centralized and harmonized, each 
line of activity being reinforced by every other and all will 
be centered in the development of power through perfected 
ideas. 



Perfection of Knowledge Quality 
Outline XV 

The Perfected Organic Idea 



THEME 



I. CONCRETE BASIS — Personally 
Emotionalized. 

1. Vivification — Sense Elements 

By Sense of Sight 

1. Color 

2. Light and Shade 

3. Form 

4. Size 

5. Dimension 

6. Distance 

7. Direction 

8. Perspective 

9. Location 

10. Motion 

By Sense of Hearing 

1 1 . Sound 
By Sense of Smell 

12. Odor 

By Sense of Taste 

13. Flavor 

By Sense of Touch 

14. Roughness and Smoothness 
By Temperature Sense 

15. Heat and Cold 
By Muscular Sense 

16. Weight 

1 7. Hardness and Softness 

18. Resistance 

2. Universal Extension 



II. NUCLEUS — Personally Emotionalized 



1. Vivification - 



Color 



Applicable to 
human beings 
only 



III. 



Sense Elements < Light and 

[_ Shade, etc. 

!. Mind Factors 

a. Relational 

1. Knowledge 

2. Reason 

b. Impressional 

1. Observation 

2. Imagination 

3. Idealization 

c. Emotional 

1. Quality 

2. Complexity 

3. Intensity 

d. Moral 

e. Religious 

I. Association 

a. Intensive Uni'versalization 

b. Causal 

1. Human 

2. Divine 

c. Resultant 

1 . Student's Experiences 

2. Art 

a. Literature 

b. Painting 

c. Architecture 

d. Sculpture 

e. Music 

1. Practical Uses 

2. Scientific 

3. Moral 

4. Religious 

5. Emotional 

a. In the Student 

b. In all classes of people 

1. Analogical 

2. Idealization 

SYNTHESIS 

1. Vivified 

2. Unified 

3. Emotionalized 



NEFF COLLEGE 

FOUNDED 1889 CHARTERED 1893 

SILAS NEFF, Ph. D. 

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT 

Applies the Principles of 

"Power Through Perfected Ideas'* 

TWO AND THREE YEAR COURSE SHORT COURSES 
PRIVATE INSTRUCTION DIPLOMAS AND DEGREES 



Courses in Personal Development, Oratory, Authorship, 
Dramatic Art, Elocution, Salesmanship 

Address 

NEFF COLLEGE 

PHILADELPHIA PENNSYLVANIA 

CORRESPONDENCE COURSES 

Complete Course in Personal Development 
now ready 

Courses in Public Speaking, Authorship, Elocution, Dramatic 
Art, Salesmanship, in preparation 

Address 

NEFF COLLEGE 

PHILADELPHIA PENNSYLVANIA 



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